•HE 


•Hi 


UNIVERSITY  OFCALSFORN5A 
AT   LOS  ANGELES 


LATER   SPEECHES 

OF 

Hon.  Chauncey  M.  Depew,  LL.D. 


At  the  Twenty-first  Annual  Dinner  given  by  the  Montauk  Club 
of  Brooklyn,  in  Celebration  of  Senator  Depew's  Seventy-eighth 
Birthday,  May  4,  1912. 

At  the  Pilgrims'  Coronation  Dinner,  Savoy  Hotel,  London,  June  28, 
-1911,  in  Honor  of  the  Special  Ambassador  to  the  Coronation, 
Hon.  John  Hays  Hammond. 

At  the  Banquet  given  by  the  American  Chamber  of  Commerce  of 
Paris,  France,  July  4,  1911. 

At  the  Meeting  in  Memory  of  Cornelius  N.  Bliss,  held  by  the  Repub- 
lican Club  of  the  City  of  New  York,  November  5,  1911. 

At  the  Dinner  of  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York,  December 
22,  1911,  in  Response  to  the  Toast:  "The  Puritan  Survival." 

At  the  Annual  Dinner  of  the  Society  of  the  Genesee,  at  the  Hotel 
Knickerbocker,  New  York  City,  January  20,  1912. 

At  the  Celebration  of  the  Treaty  of  Peace  between  France  and  the 
United  States,  made  February  6,  1778,  being  the  first  Treaty 
Ever  Made  by  the  United  States,  February  6,  1912,  at  Cafe 
Martin,  New  York  City. 

At  the  Twenty-sixth  Annual  Lincoln  Dinner  of  the  Republican 
Club  of  the  City  of  New  York,  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria,  Feb- 
ruary 12,  1912. 

At  the  Celebration  by  the  New  York  State  Society  t>f  the  Cincin- 
nati of  the  One  Hundred  and  Eightieth  B.irlhday  of  George 
Washington,  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria,  February  22,  1912. 

At  the  Dinner  given  by  the  United  Swedish  Societies  and  the 
John  Ericsson  Memorial  Association,  March  9, 1912,  at  the  Park 
Avenue  Hotel,  New  York  City,  in  Celebration  of  the  Fiftieth 
Anniversary  of  the  Battle  between  Monitor  and  Merrimac. 

At  the  Dinner  given  by  the  Lotos  Club  of  New  York  to  Mr.  Justice 
Pitney,  of  the  Supreme  Court,  May  2,  1912. 


' 


&Hg^eo^ 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Twenty-first  Annual  Dinner  Given  by 
the  Montauk  Club  of  Brooklyn,  in  Celebra- 
tion of  his  Seventy-eighth  Birthday,  May 
4,  1912. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN:     To-night  this  series 

of  birthday  dinners  comes  of  age.     For  twenty-one  successive 

years   you   have   honored   me   with   this   compliment.      Some 

£»     members  have  died,  but  their  sons,   introduced  to  me   here 

tn     when  they  were  boys,  are  now  succeeding  their  fathers  among 

>;     my  generous  hosts.     I  know  nothing  in  the  way  of  friendly 

£=    greeting  from  a  large  body  of  men  which  compares  with  it. 

33    Some  things  have  occurred  at  this  table  during  this  period 

which  have  been  widely  published  and  discussed.     Through 

^     them  the  Montauk  Club  has  been  mentioned  and  known  all 

^    over  the  world.     I  remember  some  years  ago  walking  down 

*£.    the   Strand  in  London  with   Governor  Woodruff,  how  both 

z    of  us  were  astonished  to  hear  the  newsboys  shouting,  "Speech 

of  Chauncey  Depew  at  the  Montauk  Club,"  and  to  see  the 

name  in  black  letters  on  every  news  stand  under  the  heading 

g     of  the  newspaper  which  featured  the  event.     Multitudes  be- 

^      came  familiar  with  the  Montauk  Club  who  had  never  before, 

o     and  have  never  since,  heard  of  Brooklyn. 

The  presence  here  of  my  friends  Governor  Woodruff  and 
lz  Comptroller  Prendergast  suggests  an  illuminating  incident 
showing  the  effects  of  the  Presidential  primary  on  the  citizen. 
They  live  in  the  same  Congressional  district  which  is  entitled 
to  two  delegates  to  the  National  Republican  Convention.  It 
is  a  most  intelligent  community  brought  up  under  the  elo- 
quence of  Henry  Ward  Beecher  and  the  Reverend  Dr.  Storrs, 

Senator  Depew's  birthday  is  April  236,  but,  owing  to  local  conditions, 
the  celebration  of  the  event  this  year  was  May  4th. 


44634P 


two  of  the  most  remarkable  orators  of  this  generation.  Wood- 
ruff announced  that  he  was  for  Taft.  Prendergast  declared 
emphatically  for  Roosevelt,  and  this  constituency  elected  both 
unanimously. 

In  the  varying  periods  at  which  people  arrive  at  intelli- 
gent maturity,  it  is  hard  to  determine  how  twenty-one  came 
to  be  selected  as  the  proper  date  for  every  degree  of  intelli- 
gence. In  my  own  experience  I  have  known  many  who  were 
fully  qualified  for  the  responsibilities  of  manhood  several  years 
before  twenty-one  and  others  who  never  became  of  age.  For 
some  unaccountable  reason  they  fail  to  grasp  the  opportunities 
which  come  to  every  man  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  during 
his  life.  Their  progress  is  arrested  somehow  and  they  never 
get  beyond  the  station  where  they  have  landed,  while  others 
make  a  tremendous  splurge  in  their  progression  but  never 
arrive.  Many  in  their  intellectual  equipment  present  a  Queen 
Anne  front  with  a  Mary  Ann  back.  They  seem  to  possess 
everything  necessary  for  success,  and  yet  their  friends  are 
always  disappointed  in  them  and  can  never  tell  what  screw  is 
loose  in  their  machinery. 

In  looking  over  the  record  of  the  seventy-eight  years  of 
my  life,  of  which  more  than  sixty  years  have  been  intensively 
active,  during  which  time  I  have  been  blessed  with  rare  oppor- 
tunities for  acquaintances  and  worldwide  observations,  I  find 
no  place  for  the  pessimism  of  to-day  which  is  so  prevalent  in 
every  organ  of  public  opinion  and  at  every  gathering  of  the 
people.  They  tell  us  that  the  family  bond  is  loosening  and 
the  sacred  tie  of  marriage  has  lost  strength  in  the  knot.  There 
are  twenty  millions  of  married  people  in  the  United  States, 
and  the  percentage  of  them  who  have  sought  relief  in  the 
courts  from  their  bond  is  not  appreciable  compared  with  the 
whole.  They  say  suicides  are  increasing.  There  are  ninety 
millions  of  people  in  the  United  States,  and  a  suicide  is  so 
rare  that  it  occupies  the  headlines  for  that  one  unfortunate. 
They  complain  that  there  is  an  increase  in  breaches  of  trust. 
There  have  been  in  the  last  twenty  years  continuously  in 
places  of  the  highest  trust  in  corporations  and  fiduciary  rela- 
tions with  individuals  at  least  twenty-five  thousand  people, 
and  yet  a  breach  of  trust  is  so  rare  in  a  great  institution  or  in 


the  administration  of  an  estate  that  it  arrests  and  occupies  the 
attention  of  the  whole  country.  They  tell  us  that  religion 
has  been  superseded  by  doubt,  but  the  churches  were  never  so 
near  together,  never  worked  so  harmoniously  in  common,  never 
were  rendering  such  efficient  service  and  never  so  open.  Their 
contributions  were  never  so  large  nor  so  efficiently  applied. 
There  were  never  so  many  assisting  organizations,  like  the 
Salvation  Army,  the  Volunteers  of  America,  the  Epworth 
League,  the  Christian  Endeavor  Society,  the  Young  Men's  and 
Young  Women's  Christian  Associations,  and  now  this  newly 
organized  and  aggressive  force,  gathering  strength  from  day 
to  day,  the  Religion  and  Forward  Movement. 

There  is  unrest  in  the  world  it  is  true.  It  is  more  acute 
than  ever  before.  It  is  in  all  countries.  It  has  come  from  the 
increase  in  education  and  the  enlargement  of  world  view  to 
the  individual  everywhere,  but,  with  the  exception  of  the 
infinitesimally  small  number  of  anarchistic  leaders,  it  is  an 
honest,  earnest  and  wholesome  striving  for  better  conditions, 
and,  in  the  end,  for  more  harmonious  relations  between  all 
classes  and  conditions  of  the  community. 

In  our  annual  celebrations  during  these  twenty-one  years, 
we  have  touched  lightly,  for  it  could  only  be  lightly,  upon 
the  happenings  of  the  twelve  months  preceding.  We  have 
always  drawn  from  them. the  lesson  of  hope  and  the  inspira- 
tion of  progress.  As  we  look  back  over  the  whole  twenty-one 
years  they  are  pregnant  with  lessons.  The  principal  lesson  is 
the  value  of  discussion  and  education  in  affairs  affecting  the 
government  and  the  people  as  a  whole.  I  have  ceased  to  be 
frightened  or  greatly  disturbed  over  tumultuous  popular  up- 
risings which  seem  to  threaten  the  very  foundations.  The 
Ark  of  the  Covenant  may  rock  on  rough  roads,  or  with  incom- 
petent guides,  or  the  efforts  of  impious  hands  to  see  what 
would  follow  the  destruction  of  faith,  and  yet  after  proper 
efforts,  after  the  lazy  have  been  energized,  after  the  atmos- 
phere has  been  cleared  by  the  heat  of  debate,  the  social  and 
political  fabric  is  not  rebuilt  but  improved  and  remains  stable 
for  another  long  period. 

Our  experiment  of  government  started  with  the  Con- 
federation. It  was  found  to  be  a  rope  of  sand.  With  that 


experience  our  Fathers  framed  the  present  Constitution  and 
created  a  Republic  of  sovereign  States  with  a  supreme  central 
government.  They  threw  every  possible  check  around  hasty 
and  immature  action  and  every  guard  which  wisdom  and 
forethought  could  devise  against  revolution.  The  result  is 
that  our  Constitution  is  the  only  one  in  the  world  which  lives 
to-day  as  it  did  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  ago  and  is 
found  as  adaptable  for  all  the  wants,  all  the  desires,  all  the 
aspirations  and  all  the  development  of  ninety  millions  of  people 
and  forty-eight  States  as  it  was  for  three  millions  of  people 
and  thirteen  States. 

I  well  remember  the  years  of  the  slavery  discussion  from 
'48  to  '6 1.  It  began  with  a  few  Abolitionists  who  were  regarded 
as  anarchists.  With  discussion  and  debate,  it  got  so  far  as 
to  safeguard  the  institution  where  it  existed  and  to  prohibit 
its  extension  into  the  States  that  were  to  be  formed  out  of 
the  new  territories.  On  that  issue  and  the  preservation  of 
the  Union  we  fought  the  Civil  War  and  slavery  was  abolished 
and  the  Union  was  triumphant.  Then  came  the  long  discus- 
sion of  reconstruction.  Had  the  extremist  prevailed  the  States 
which  went  into  rebellion  would  have  remained  subject  prov- 
inces with  a  certainty  of  frequent  revolutions.  Again  discussion 
and  debate  allayed  passions,  buried  resentments,  recognized 
that  the  country  must  live,  if  it  live.d  at  all,  under  the  Consti- 
tution of  the  Fathers  and  with  a  central  government  and 
sovereign  States  as  they  originated  it.  That  settled  forever 
the  question  of  the  Union  of  the  States  and  of.  the  powers  of 
the  Federal  Government  as  distinguished  from  those  of  the 
state  sovereignties. 

We  can  all  remember  the  cowardice  of  the  public  men 
of  all  parties  in  the  United  States  during  the  period  of  irre- 
deemable currency  and  fiat  money.  Again  discussion  and 
debate,  aided  by  frequent  panics  and  frightful  bankruptcies, 
brought  us  to  the  resumption  of  specie  payments.  Then  for 
twenty  years  cowardice  among  those  who  knew,  and  there  were 
not  many,  and  the  desire  to  catch  the  fleeting  sentiment  of  the 
hour  by  demagogues,  and  there  were  many,  and  the  passionate 
belief  in  silver  which  was  almost  universal  ruled  and  nearly 
ruined  the  country.  Again  discussion  and  debate,  and  the 


wholesome  discipline  of  financial  disturbances  anJ  industrial 
disasters  and  general  bankruptcies  clarified  the  air  and  that 
question  was  disposed  of.  We  came  to  a  gold  standard  like 
all  the  rest  of  the  highly  organized  industrial  nations  of  the 
world. 

We  then  entered  at  once  upon  an  extraordinary  period  of 
development  of  resources,  of  extension  of  enterprises,  of 
settlement  of  new  lands,  of  organization  of  growing  communi- 
ties and  a  general  prosperity  such  as  the  world  has  never  wit- 
nessed. 

The  Presidents  during  this  period,  and  I  will  only  speak 
of  those  who  have  joined  the  majority,  were  Harrison,  Cleve- 
land and  McKinley. 

Harrison  was  one  of  the  ablest  of  our  Presidents.  He 
was  a  great  lawyer  and  had  a  wonderful  and  intuitive  grasp 
of  our  internal  policy  and  foreign  relations.  He  had  an  unfor- 
tunate manner,  though  a  very  warm,  genial,  loving  and  lovable 
disposition.  I  have  known  many  public  men  who  failed  long 
before  they  reached  the  presidency  because  of  unfortunate 
manners.  I  have  known  many  business  men  who  were  most 
unpopular  for  the  same  reason.  It  comes  usually  from  the 
hard  struggle  in  the  beginning  of  a  career.  It  comes  some- 
times from  timidity  and  distrust  of  one's  self.  I  have  known 
people  who  were  most  rude  and  discourteous,  which  was  their 
only  method  of  asserting  their  individuality  and  equality  with 
others  who,  for  some  reason  which  they  could  not  account  for, 
they  distrusted  or  feared.  General  Harrison  said  to  me  one 
day,  "My  whole  life  has  been  one  of  struggle  and  fight.  No 
one  ever  did  me  a  favor  or  lent  me  a  helping  hand.  I  began 
alone  without  fortune  or  acquaintances.  Every  step  of  my 
career  has  been  against  violent,  and  often  virulent,  opposition." 
In  that  brief  expression  I  saw  the  secret  of  his  unpopularity. 
Everyone  with  whom  he  came  in  contact  was  a  possible  enemy, 
but  when  the  story  of  his  administration  comes  to  be  written 
his  fame  will  grow  brighter  as  the  narrative  advances. 

Harrison  offered  me  a  place  in  his  Cabinet  at  the  begin- 
ning of  his  administration  and  the  position  of  Secretary  of 
State  when  Elaine  resigned,  which  I  declined,  but  promised  to 
accept  if  he  was  re-elected.  This  brought  about  an  opportunity 


8 

for  intimacy  with  and  study  and  appreciation  of  this  remark- 
able man  who  won  laurels  on  battlefields  as  a  soldier,  distinc- 
tion at  the  Bar  and  an  enduring  place  in  our  history  as  a 
statesman. 

Cleveland  I  knew  at  the  Bar — a  strong,  robust,  virile, 
self-reliant,  aggressive,  courageous  and  honest  personality.  I 
have  met  all  the  leaders  of  the  Bar  of  the  last  fifty  years,  and 
he  certainly  was  an  original.  While  President  of  the  New 
York  Central  Railroad  I  offered  him  the  attorneyship  of  the 
company  in  Western  New  York.  I  said  to  him  that  he  could 
so  organize  his  office  as  to  keep  his  present  practice  which 
was  worth  ten  thousand  dollars  a  year,  while  the  place  I 
offered  him  would  add  fifteen  thousand  to  it.  His  answer  was 
unique — "I  have  set  for  myself  a  limit  of  the  work  I  will  do 
and  reserve  time  enough  for  pleasure  and  sport  and  to  fish. 
I  have  reached  my  limit  in  my  private  practice,  and  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars  a  year  would  not  tempt  me  to  add  an  hour 
more  to  what  I  am  doing."  His  convictions  were  adamant. 
He  had  been  brought  up  in  the  Democratic  faith  and  would 
put  into  practice  its  theories.  When  the  Wilson  Tariff  Bill 
was  passed,  which  was  a  compromise  between  Democratic 
theories  and  protection  practices  within  his  party,  he  denounced 
it  as  a  scheme  of  perfidy  and  dishonor  and  withheld  his  signa- 
ture. He  demanded  the  repeal  of  the  Silver  Purchase  Bill 
which  threatened  endless  trouble  to  our  currency,  and  with 
the  aid  of  Republican  votes  secured  it.  He  vetoed  the  Bland 
Silver  Bill  which  was  the  Waterloo  of  Silver,  either  by  itself 
or  in  the  double  standard,  being  the  standard  of  value  in  the 
United  States. 

Those  three  things  lost  him  the  support  of  his  party.  He 
retired  from  office  with  a  unanimity  never  equalled  because  the 
Republicans  were  naturally  against  him  and  he  did  not  have  a 
corporal's  guard  of  political  friends  in  his  own  party.  But 
his  rugged  figure  will  ever  be  a  conspicuous  one  among  Ameri- 
can statesmen.  His  style  in  his  public  documents  and  addresses 
had  a  Johnsonian  characteristic  which  was  new  in  our  political 
literature.  I  asked  him  where  he  acquired  it  and  how.  He 
said,  "'My  father  was  a  clergyman.  His  means  were  limited 
and  he  could  not  afford  to  send  me  to  the  academies,  and  so  I 


9 

was  educated  at  home.  He  took  particular  pains  with  my 
compositions,  and  naturally  he  taught  me  the  style  of  his 
sermons."  The  result  was,  he  said,  that  while  at  the  Bar  in 
Buffalo  when  a  member  died  he  was  always  called  upon  to 
write  the  obituary. 

McKinley  was  the  most  genial  and  lovable  of  our  Presi- 
dents. He  would  give  a  visitor  a  Pink  from  the  bouquet  which 
was  always  on  his  table  in  a  manner  which  led  the  recipient  to 
believe  that  none  other  of  the  millions  of  men  and  women  and 
children  in  the  United  States  had  ever  received  such  a  distinc- 
tion. Yet  he  gave  Pinks  to  everybody  who  called  without  de- 
stroying this  illusion. 

He  was  the  most  accomplished  campaigner  among  our 
Presidents  and  had  few  equals  upon  the  platform  in  popularity 
and  persuasion.  He  sensed,  as  it  were,  the  public  temper  and 
how  it  might  be  moved  as  few  have  ever  done.  His  campaign 
for  the  Presidency  was  an  extraordinary  illustration  of  the 
thought,  which  I  have  been  advancing,  that  with  discussion, 
argument  and  debate  the  American  people  in  the  end  come 
out  right  no  matter  how  wrong  they  may  have  been  from 
temporary  causes  for  a  period.  Mark  Hanna,  the  most  prac- 
tical statesman  who  ever  lived,  raised  and  spent  four  millions 
of  dollars  in  that  canvass,  not  to  buy  votes  but  to  erect  a 
platform  and  put  a  speaker  on  it  in  every  school  district  in 
the  United  States,  to  secure  space  in  the  columns  of  news- 
papers in  every  locality  and  to  print  tons  of  literature  and 
send  colporteurs  to  distribute  it  in  buggy-wagons  throughout 
all  the  highways  and  byways  of  the  land.  That  was  what  won 
the  gold  standard  over  the  silver  craze  under  most  unfavorable 
conditions. 

Mr.  McKinley  sent  for  me  during  this  campaign  and  said, 
"I  wish  you  could  take  your  car  and  go  down  through  those 
disaffected  regions  where  the  farmers  are  all  Republicans,  but 
where  they  are  in  distress  because  corn  is  fifteen  cents  and 
wheat  sixty  cents  a  bushel,  and  they  cannot  pay  the  interest 
on  their  mortgages  and  have  hard  work  with  their  taxes.  They 
think  fifty-cent  silver,  if  it  has  the  stamp  of  the  United  States 
upon  it,  will  give  them  double  for  their  corn,  wheat,  cattle  and 
hogs,  and  then  they  can  use  it  at  par  to  pay  the  interest  on 


IO 

their  mortgages  and  their  taxes,  and  the  other  things  which 
they  would  ordinarily  desire  they  can  go  without  for  a  long 
time." 

"But,"  I  said,  "Mr.  McKinley,  I  am  President  of  a  great 
railroad  and  with  a  private  car  those  people  would  mob  me." 
He  said,  "Nothing  of  the  kind.  It  is  the  shock  which  will 
secure  their  attention  and  then  your  talk  will  convince  them 
of  their  error."  I  remember  once  from  a  great  audience  a 
farmer  arose,  when  I  thought  I  was  making  an  impressive 
argument  against  silver,  and  said,  "Chauncey  Depew,  we  are 
glad  to  see  you,  but  what  right  have  you  to  come  among  us 
in  our  distress  when  the  present  prices  of  the  things  we  have 
to  sell  do  not  pay  for  the  raising  of  them,  while  we  think  with 
fifty-cent  silver  we  will  get  double  the  price.  But  that  is  not 
what  I  complain  of;  it  is  that  you,  President  of  a  great  rail- 
road, with  a  salary  of  fifty  thousand  dollars  a  year,  and  in  a 
private  car,  should  come  down  here  and  attempt  to  instruct 
us."  I  lost  the  audience  at  once.  There  is  a  favorite  song  in 
Yale — "Audacia!  Audacia!  It  is  the  word  I  love  the  best."  I 
stepped  to  the  front  of  the  platform  while  a  great  hush  came 
over  the  audience  and  said,  "Sir,  my  father  gave  me  my  educa- 
tion and  profession  and  then  figuratively  threw  me  out  of  the 
window  to  look  out  for  myself  and  never  helped  me  after- 
ward. I  began  in  a  little  village,  with  no  capital  but  my  legs, 
my  hands  and  my  head.  I  had  a  hard  struggle  trying  cases 
before  country  Justices  of  the  Peace,  where  I  would  furnish 
my  own  horse  and  wagon  and  ride  ten,  fifteen  or  twenty  miles 
and  back  after  the  case  was  tried  for  five  dollars  or  less.  An 
opportunity  came  to  me  to  be  the  attorney  of  a  railroad.  I 
saw  that  meant  that  instead  of  one  client  and  petty  grievances, 
every  one  of  the  thousands  of  stockholders  of  the  company 
would  be  my  clients,  as  represented  in  the  Board  of  Directors 
vvhpm  they  elected  every  year,  so  that  at  one  leap  instead  of 
having  a  score  or  so  of  clients  I  got  ten  thousand. 

"A  railroad  counsel's  business  is  mairily  to  prevent  the 
strong  and  masterful  men  who  have  come  up  from  the  bottom 
and  are  running  the  corporation  from  violating  the  law  and  to 
keep  them  straight  within  the  law.  Now  I  am  President,  and 
getting  a  big  salary,  as  you  say,  and  I  am  here  in  a  private  car 


II 

which  is  all  part  of  my  compensation.  I  understand  (this  I 
did  not  know,  but  it  happened  to  be  true)  that  you  have  at 
college  a  son  who  is  your  pride  and  hope ;  that  after  he  gradu- 
ates at  the  coming  Commencement  you  intend  to  make  him  a 
lawyer  and  you  are  making  great  sacrifices  to  put  him  through 
college  and  give  him  his  profession.  Now,  if  you  are  doing 
that  in  order  that  he  shall  practice  law  for  his  health,  then  I 
have  no  right  to  be  here,  but  if  you  wish  him  to  start  where  I 
did,  with  the  chance  of  getting  where  I  am,  then  I  do  not  think 
that  you  can  criticise  me."  He  yelled  so  you  could  hear  him  a 
mile,  "Go  on,  Chauncey,  you  are  all  right."  There  is  no  sub- 
ject so  interesting  as  what  is  effective  in  political  discussion 
before  an  audience.  That  little  incident,  illustrative  of  the 
possibilities  of  American  Citizenship  for  the  youth  of  the  land, 
had  more  influence  than  all  the  argument  which  could  be 
presented. 

Mr.  McKinley  sent  for  me  again  and  said,  "Mr.  Bryan 
is  producing  a  tremendous  impression  in  our  State,  and  a  very 
dangerous  one,  not  by  what  he  says,  but  by  his  endurance. 
No  one  has  ever  gone  through  our  State  of  Ohio  who  has 
spoken  so  often  and  so  many  hours  in  a  single  day.  The 
papers  are  full  of  his  last  performance.  I  want  you  to  go 
over  that  route  and  do  the  same  thing.  As  you  are  nearly 
twice  his  age,  it  will  be  the  most  effective  counterblast  I  can 
think  of."  I  did  as  he  requested,  starting  at  seven  o'clock  in 
the  morning,  stopping  at  the  same  places,  scheduled  for  the 
same  length  of  time,  with  enormous  audiences  everywhere, 
and  capped  it  by  adding  a  two-hour  speech  to  a  great  audience 
at  night.  The  endurance  test  as  a  qualification  for  the  Presi- 
dency passed  out  of  the  canvass. 

With  the  exception  of  the  war  for  the  preservation  of  the 
Union,  all  our  perils  under  the  Constitution  have  been  averted 
by  discussion  and  debate.  A  busy  people,  engrossed  in  their 
various  occupations,  have  little  time  to  study  serious  questions 
of  government.  The  ability  to  transact  the  affairs  of  the  peo- 
ple, the  same  as  the  affairs  of  a  corporation,  or  a  firm,  or  a 
co-operative  society,  or  a  charitable  or  religious  organization, 
or  a  labor  union,  does  not  depend  upon  superior  intelligence 
but  upon  experience  and  the  time  which  can  be  taken  from 


12 

one's  other  pursuits  to  serve  a  large  constituency.  It  is  because 
the  lawyer  or  the  plumber,  the  doctor  or  the  carpenter,  the 
minister  or  the  mason,  knows  more  about  his  particular  busi- 
ness and  the  performance  of  it  in  the  interests  of  others  than 
the  whole  mass  can  that  society  is  thus  divided,  and  each 
employs  the  others  for  its  comfort,  safety  and  enterprises.  So, 
representative  government  became  established  by  the  selection 
by  busy  people  of  competent  men  to  do  this  special  and  most 
needful  work. 

At  present,  however,  there  is  a  new  agitation  which  has 
much  force  and  is  progressing  rapidly  and  is  exciting  in  many 
minds  the  greatest  alarm.  We  are  better  educated  than  ever 
before  and  that  has  created  our  unrest.  At  the  same  time  our 
minds  are  open  to  a  quicker  apprehension  of  the  right  and 
wrong  of  all  propositions  by  more  education. 

I  have  not  time  here,  nor  have  you,  to  enter  upon  this 
discussion,  except  to  briefly  state  a  few  self-evident  facts.  The 
appeal  made  by  their  projectors  to  the  people  for  these  new 
policies  is  that  the  people  do  not  have  their  share  in  their  own 
government.  As  ours  is  absolutely  a  government  by  the  people, 
with  frequent  elections  to  test  the  capacity  and  ability  of  the 
officials  whom  they  have  elected,  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the 
people  do  not  have  their  share  in  the  government. 

Pushed  to  the  extreme,  the  claim  is  that  the  people  do 
not  need  mayors  and  boards  of  aldermen  for  their  cities, 
or  presidents  and  village  trustees  for  their  villages,  or  boards 
of  supervisors  for  their  counties,  or  governors  and  legislatures 
for  their  States,  or  Presidents  and  Congresses  for  the  general 
government,  nor  courts  to  protect  the  weak  against  the  strong 
and  to  administer  justice  without  fear  or  favor  of  power,  or 
wealth  or  influence.  It  is  proposed  as  soon  as  a  governor  or  a 
congressman  or  a  judge  is  elected  to  allow  a  small  percentage 
of  the  people  to  immediately,  by  petition,  suspend  his  functions 
and  compel  him  to  submit  to  another  election.  When  an  un- 
popular verdict  was  rendered  the  other  day,  some  of  the  most 
advanced  of  this  school  added  to  their  program  also  the  recall 
of  the  jury.  These  propositions  are  not  new.  They  were 
fully  argued  by  Aristotle  over  twenty-three  hundred  years  ago 
and  declared  by  him  to  substitute  a  government  by  anarchy 


13 

for  a  government  by  law.  But,  then,  the  new  school  tells  us 
that  there  is  no  virtue  or  wisdom  in  the  past  which  we  are 
bound  to  follow.  The  old  fogies  who  framed  the  Constitution 
are  all  right  in  their  niches  in  the  temple  of  fame,  but  except 
as  models  for  monuments  to  ornament  parks  their  usefulness 
long  since  departed. 

There  was  an  article  recently  in  the  papers  that  the  litera- 
ture class  at  one  of  our  greatest  colleges  had  been  permitted 
to  discard  history  and  the  classics  and  study  only  recent  litera- 
ture. Aristotle  was  quoted  favorably  by  one  of  the  authors 
in  the  day's  lesson,  and  the  professor  asked  in  what  period 
Aristotle  wrote.  The  answer  was,  "about  1840;  certainly  not 
earlier." 

I  discovered  while  in  the  Senate  that  there  are  statesmen 
who,  especially  on  questions  in  which  labor  unions  are  inter- 
ested, will  prepare  and  present  bills  which  are  transparently 
unconstitutional.  For  fear  that  they  may  lose  the  authorship, 
they  will  not  permit  any  changes.  Their  colleagues  let  them 
have  their  way  on  account  of  the  strength  o-f  Senatorial  cour- 
tesy, and  also  for  fear  that  an  attempt  to  amend  will  be 
regarded  as  hostility  to  the  measure  by  the  labor  unions.  When 
the  Supreme  Court  decides  the  act  unconstitutional,  the  author 
berates  the  court  and  shouts  that  the  people  do  not  govern 
themselves  and  wants  the  judges  recalled.  He  neglects  to  state 
that  the  court  invariably  says  in  its  decision  how  that  act  can 
be  made  constitutional  and  effect  the  same  purpose.  The  court 
simply  performs  its  duty  and  throws  back  upon  the  legislative 
body  the  necessity  of  performing  its  duty  intelligently. 

We  have  long  had  the  referendum  in  our  State  on  Con- 
stitutional questions.  The  Constitutional  amendments,  how- 
ever, have  been  thoroughly  prepared  and  passed  by  two  legis- 
latures before  they  are  submitted,  and  have  been  discussed  in 
the  press  and  on  the  platform.  A  table  made  up  recently 
showed  this  startling  result;  that  on  all  the  constitutional 
amendments  which  have  been  submitted  to  the  people  of  this 
State  only  thirty  per  cent  of  those  who  voted  for  public  officers 
at  the  time  voted  at  all  on  the  constitutional  amendments,  and 
a  majority  of  this  thirty  per  cent  put  the  amendments  into  the 
Constitution,  the  result  showing  that  a  minority  of  about  six- 


14 

teen  per  cent  of  the  voters  of  the  State  who  voted  at  the  same 
elections  amended  the  fundamental  law.  In  the  submission 
last  year  the  amendments,  most  of  which  were  most  valuable, 
were  defeated.  I  met  at  the  polls  a  doctor  of  great  reputation 
and  extensive  practice  and  a  mechanic  who  does  a  great  deal 
of  work  for  me.  I  said,  "How  about  the  constitutional  amend- 
ments?" and  each  answered  substantially,  "I  have  not  had 
time  to  read  and  study  them,  and  so  voted  against  them  all 
on  the  ground  that  we  seem  to  have  a  pretty  good  Constitution 
and  I  do  not  propose  to  change  it  without  more  study  and 
reflection." 

I  have  twice  been  a  Member  of  the  Legislature  of  our 
State  and  twelve  years  a  United  States  Senator.  It  has  given 
me  much  experience  in  the  way  laws  are  made.  An  act  is 
prepared,  more  or  less  carefully,  and  then  passes  the  scrutiny 
of  a  committee,  and  then  attention  and  debate  in  the  whole 
house,  and  then  review  by  the  Governor.  Even  with  this  care 
many  laws  fail  to  meet  the  object  for  which  they  were  enacted, 
and  are  amended  or  repealed  at  the  next  session.  Under  the 
initiative  a  small  minority,  wishing  to  accomplish  some  definite 
object,  prepares  a  statute,  and  the  majority  of  those  who  vote, 
which  may  be  much  less  than  a  majority  of  the  whole  elec- 
torate, command  the  Legislature  to  enact  and  the  Governor 
to  sign  this  law  just  as  this  little  body  prepared  it.  I  know 
of  no  device  so  potent  for  able,  scheming,  plausible,  unscrupu- 
lous and  rich  men  to  defraud  and  injure  the  public. 

With  us  in  New  York  City  the  evils  of  our  local  govern- 
ment become  so  great  at  times  that  the  people  arise  in  their 
might  and  men  of  all  parties  unite  in  a  reform  movement 
which  places  clean  and  able  representatives  of  the  people  in 
power.  As  soon  as  the  reform  has  accomplished  its  purpose, 
the  various  elements  disband,  and,  except  under  similar  revo- 
lutionary efforts  years  afterward,  can  never  be  brought  to- 
gether. This  reform  movement  elected  Mayor  Gaynor,  who 
has  proved  to  be  an  admirable  executive,  Comptroller  Pren- 
dergast,  one  of  the  best  financial  officers  the  City  has  ever  had, 
and  the  Borough  Presidents  who  are  doing  excellent  work. 
In  addition,  it  elected  several  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
Under  the  recall,  when  Tammany  had  once  more  come  into 


15 

power  and  we  had  forgotten,  as  we  do  so  rapidly,  the  causes 
which  elected  the  reform  ticket,  ten  per  cent  of  the  voters 
could  recall  them  and  within  a  year  they  would  all  be  out  of 
office  and  the  old  order  in  authority. 

During  this  period  there  has  been  greater  progress  for 
universal  peace  among  the  nations  than  in  all  preceding  time, 
and  yet  the  last  year  shows  how  frail,  as  yet,  are  ties  of  peace. 
The  lure  of  the  Orient  captured  the  imagination  of  Rome 
three  thousand  years  ago,  for  the  destruction  of  Carthage,  the 
control  of  the  Mediterranean  and  the  conquest  of  Africa. 
After  thirty  centuries  there  is  a  recrudescence  of  the  same 
spirit,  which  seizes  Tripoli  and  brings  on  a  war  with  Turkey, 
producing  international  complications,  the  result  of  which  no 
one  can  predict. 

I  met  last  summer  an  old  diplomat  who  was  a  mine  of  the 
secrets  of  his  profession.  He  told  a  story  which  illustrated 
how  near  we  were,  for  a  while,  to  the  most  disastrous  war  of 
modern  times.  The  German  Emperor,  one  of  the  greatest 
rulers  his  country  ever  had,  made  his  delphic  utterance  that 
Germany  must  have  her  place  in  the  Sun.  From  the  German 
standpoint,  and  after  her  success  in  acquiring  Alsace  and 
Lorraine,  there  was  no  country  which  could  be  crowded  out  to 
make  room  for  Germany,  except  France.  There  was  a  revolt 
against  the  Sultan  of  Morocco  and  anarchy  existed  at  the 
Moroccan  capital.  Germany  said  to  France,  "As  you  have  the 
controlling  influence  in  Morocco,  you  must  restore  order,  so 
our  people  will  not  be  molested  in  their  trade  and  commerce, 
or  we  will  do  it."  France  said,  "Very  well,  we  will  assume 
the  responsibility."  The  French  army  marched  to  Fez,  sub- 
dued the  rebellion,  restored  order  and  saved  the  Sultan.  Ger- 
many then  said,  "This  success  of  yours  has  given  France  such 
undue  prominence  in  Africa  that  Germany  must  be  compen- 
sated." But  France  replied,  "We  undertook  this  at  your 
request,  and  not  for  conquest,  and  we  will  retire  at  once  and 
move  our  army  back  to  Algiers."  Germany  said,  "That  will 
not  help.  Your  government  has  been  given  prestige,  and  that 
is  an  undue  power,  and  so  we  must  be  compensated." 

German  cruisers  appeared  in  Moroccan  ports,  and  an 
army  of  700,000  men,  the  strongest,  best  disciplined  and  best 


i6 

equipped  in  the  world,  was  ready  to  move  across  the  French 
frontier  on  an  hour's  notice.  England  emphatically  declared 
herself  an  ally  of  France,  and  Russia  was  not  far  behind.  It 
was  discovered  that  the  French  army  was  more  efficient  than 
since  Napoleon,  and  that  there  was  a  patriotic  spirit  in  France 
which  had  not  been  equalled  in  any  period  since  the  Republic. 
Then  began  the  famous  conversations  between  my  old  friend 
Ambassador  Cambon  and  the  German  foreign  minister  von 
Kinderlen-Waechter.  Cambon  is  a  delightful  conversation- 
alist, but  even  his  powers  must  have  been  strained  to  keep 
up  the  interest  for  hours  every  day  during  several  months. 
The  conversations  resulted,  however,  in  granting  France  suzer- 
ainty over  Morocco,  which  may  cause  more  trouble  than  it 
will  give  profit,  and  Germany  secured  its  bigger  place  in  the 
Sun  by  taking  from  France  a  large  part  of  her  African  pos- 
sessions. 

Contempt  for  the  wisdom  of  the  past  is  also  not  new.  My 
father  was  a  plain-spoken  man  with  the  characteristics  of  the 
earlier  people  whose  ancestors  settled  along  the  Hudson  River. 
In  his  declining  years  he  was  accustomed  to  sit  on  the  piazza, 
smoke  his  cigar  and  read  his  paper.  There  were  some  college 
students  practicing  for  a  boat  race  in  the  bay.  Returning 
after  their  exercises,  they  jumped  onto  the  wall  of  the  terrace 
in  front  of  the  house  and  began  discussing  the  superiority  of 
the  present  generation  over  the  preceding  ones.  One  of  them 
said  triumphantly,  "My  father  is  seventy-five  years  old  and 
for  his  period  a  very  intelligent  man,  but  with  the  opportunities 
there  are  to-day  I  know  more  and  have  more  intelligence  than 
my  father  has  at  seventy-five,"  and  turning  around  he  shouted 
to  my  father,  "Well,  old  gentleman,  what  do  you  think  of 
that?"  Father's  answer  was,  "I  was  thinking  what  a  damned 
fool  your  father  must  be." 

No  American  can  fail  to  be  a  progressive.  The  story  of 
American  progress  during  the  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 
years  under  our  form  of  government  is  a  most  thrilling  narra- 
tive. It  surpasses  in  romance  and  reality  the  progress  of  all 
preceding  ages.  We  only  need  to  study  to  learn  that  most  of 
these  new  notions  are  not  progress,  but  they  were  tried  thor- 
oughly and  ended  in  lamentable  disasters  in  ancient  and 


mediaeval  republics  and  in  the  revolutions  of  modern  govern- 
ments. 

Talleyrand,  fleeing  from  the  guillotine  in  the  French  Revo- 
lution, and  coming  to  America,  wrote  to  Madame  de  Stael 
that  he  found  here  thirty-two  religions  and  only  one  sauce, 
but  when  Talleyrand's  countrymen  arrive  on  the  occasion  of 
the  celebration  of  the  unveiling  of  the  monument  to  Champlain 
this  week,  they  will  discover  that  probably  we  have  more  forms 
of  religion  and  religious  sects  than  existed  in  Talleyrand's 
time,  but  we  have  as  many  sauces  in  our  restaurants  and  hotels 
as  are  to  be  found  in  Paris. 

We  think  there  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun,  and  Wall 
Street  remarks,  as  if  it  was  the  discovery  of  that  self-sufficient 
body,  that  there  is  danger  in  advance  information,  but  this 
wise  old  Frenchman  Talleyrand  also  wrote  that  in  betting  on 
certainties  he  lost  one  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  dollars. 

I  met  a  friend  the  other  day  whom  I  have  not  seen  for  a 
long  time  and  whom  I  thought  had  joined  the  majority  be- 
cause he  was  a  consumptive.  He  seemed  to  be  as  he  had  been 
twenty  years  before,  and  said,  "No,  Chauncey,  it  was  not 
consumption  but  asthma,  and  you  can  live  forever  if  you  only 
have  asthma  and  the  grace  of  God." 

One  of  my  experiences  while  in  Europe  -is  to  be  asked 
about  expatriated  Americans  who  have  assumed  titles  of 
nobility.  A  French  lady  of  the  bluest  blood  said  to  me  last 
summer,  "A  countryman  of  yours  who  claims  French  descent 
has  sent  to  us  an  extraordinary  genealogy.  It  surpasses  in 
distinction  that  of  the  oldest  and  most  distinguished  of  our 
nobility.  Do  you  know  how  he  came  by  it?"  "Oh,  yes,"  I 
said,  "his  ancestor  fought  gloriously  at  Agincourt  in  1415, 
and  was  killed  at  Waterloo." 

Well,  my  friends,  the  beautiful  lesson  which  we  can  draw 
from  these  recurring  anniversaries  and  their  review  of  the  past 
is  what  a  glorious  world  we  live  in  and  what  a  mighty  privilege 
it  is  to  live.  We  were  not  created  to  dream  or  to  long  for  idle 
days  and  hours,  but  to  so  work  that  in  its  accomplishments  we 
derive  pleasure  from  our  work  and  to  so  play  that  our  amuse- 
ments are  our  health  restorers  and  our  sanatoriums,  to  so 
love  that  we  can  derive  comfort  and  instruction  and  happiness 


i8 

from  the  whole  circle,  not  only  of  our  friends  but  of  our 
acquaintances,  and  to  have  faith  so  firm  in  our  country  and 
its  future  that  without  fear  and  without  doubt,  but  with  hope 
eternal,  we  can,  after  we  have  done  our  share  as  citizens, 
leave  it  unimpaired  to  those  who  come  after  us. 


(Stenographic  Report) 

SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Pilgrims'  Coronation  Dinner,  Savoy 
Hotel,  London,  Wednesday,  June  28,  1911, 
in  Honor  of  the  Special  Ambassador  to  the 
Coronation,  Hon.  John  Hays  Hammond. 

MR.  CHAIRMAN  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  I  am  very  glad  to  be 
here  because  for  one  reason  I  had  the  pleasure  of  making  a 
speech  at  the  Pilgrims'  Dinner  in  New  York  for  Mr.  Ham- 
mond as  Special  Ambassador  to  the  Coronation.  I  assured 
him  at  the  time  that  he  would  be  dined  by  the  Pilgrims'  Society 
in  London  when  he  arrived,  and  again  by  the  Pilgrims'  Society 
in  America  when  he  returned,  and  I  advised  him  that  in  a 
mission  of  peace  among  men,  and  especially  between  English 
speaking  peoples,  the  thing  for  him  to  do  to  promote  good- 
will and  friendship  between  the  people  of  the  United  States 
and  the  people  of  Great  Britain  was  to  accept  every  invitation 
which  was  offered  him  on  this  side  and  give  as  many  in 
return  as  he  could.  Now  I  am  happily  relieved  from  the 
limitations  which  fall  upon  a  Special  Ambassador  and  upon 
all  Ambassadors.  I  am  three  months  out  of  office.  There  is 
no  Sword  of  Damocles  hanging  over  my  head,  but  as  an  in- 
dependent citizen  I  can  acquire  more  influence  at  home  by 
saying  imprudent  things  as  a  private  citizen  than  I  can  by 
talking  solid  sense.  (Laughter.)  And  there  is  another  special 
reason  which  gratifies  me  in  being  here  to-night,  and  that  is  that 
we  are  under  the  Chairmanship  of  Mr.  Balfour — (applause) 
— because  all  Americans  remember  that  at  a  critical  period  in 
our  history,  when  we  were  in  danger  of  having  a  little  dif- 
ficulty of  ours  enormously  exaggerated  by  a  Continental  com- 
bine against  us,  that  combine  was  defeated  largely  by  the 
personal  influence  of  Mr.  Balfour.  (Cheers.)  Now  I  wonder 
— because  on  occasions  like  this  marvelous  Coronation,  and 
I  have  been  at  all  the  demonstrations  of  Empire  which  have 
occurred  in  Great  Britain,  there  are  certain  things  which  oc- 
cur to  a  man  who  has  been  many  years,  and  I  have  been  so 


2O 

many  that  I  will  not  acknowledge  them,  in  touch  with  public 
affairs — I  wonder  whether  if  John  Adams,  mentioned  by  Mr. 
Birrell,  Washington,  Hamilton  and  Jefferson,  the  four  great 
creators  of  our  Republic,  had  been  re-incarnated  and,  in  frve- 
guinea  seats — (laughter) — had  witnessed  that  marvelous  pro- 
cession, with  Canada,  the  elder  daughter  of  the  Empire,  at  the 
head,  they  would  have  regretted  that  they  were  not  at  the 
head,  as  they  would  have  been  if  we  had  not  separated.  My 
impression  is  that  they  would  not.  (Laughter.)  If  I  was  an 
Ambassador  and  had  been  in  jail,  I  would  not  have  said  that, 
but  what  they  would  have  thought  is  that  in  the  evolution  of 
the  two  countries  which  has  occurred  since  the  separation, 
each  carrying  out  its  own  ideas  in  its  own  way  to  its  manifest 
destiny,  they  have  worked  upon  each  other  in  the  development 
of  liberty  as  they  never  could  have  done  if  they  had  been 
together.  (Applause.) 

Now,  Daniel  Webster,  who  was  the  greatest  of  our 
-orators,  in  a  remarkable  figure,  as  I  remember  it,  said: 
"  Whose  morning  drumbeat,  following  the  sun,  and  keeping 
company  with  the  hours,  circles  the  earth  with  one  continuous 
and  unbroken  strain  of  the  martial  airs  of  England."  His 
idea,  eighty  years  ago,  was  that  those  martial  strains  meant 
power,  the  power  of  the  white  race  over  subject  peoples.  But 
the  music  which  went  round  the  world  on  the  day  of  the 
Coronation  was  entirely  different,  because  it  was  an  anthem 
which  reached  a  continuous  circle  of  the  same  blood  and  same 
people,  saying  that  the  succession  of  independent  states  belting 
the  Globe  were  united  in  one  Empire  in  a  glory  and  strength 
greater  than  men  of  Webster's  period  ever  dreamed  of. 
(Applause.)  Now  we  over  in  our  country,  I  do  not  know 
how  it  is  here,  are  considerably  disturbed  on  the  subject  of 
germs.  (Laughter.)  We  have,  in  a  measure,  exterminated 
the  mosquito,  and  just  before  I  left  some  scientific  health 
people  had  organized  in  every  village  a  society  called  "  Swat 
the  House-fly."  (Laughter.)  During  nearly  eighty  years  the 
microbes  have  been  fighting  and  having  a  jolly  time  in  my 
blood,  but,  so  far  as  I  know,  without  any  disturbance  to 
myself;  and  neither  my  digestion  nor  appetite  nor  health  have 
ever  been  interfered  with  by  germs  or  microbes.  I  dismiss, 


21 

therefore,  the  health  side;  but  it  occurred  to  me  as  I  was 
coming  across  the. Channel,  and  reading  the  marvelous  ac- 
counts of  the  Coronation  ceremonies,  that  there  is  something 
in  the  germ  in  the  historical  sense. 

Up  in  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  is  an  old  Puritan  church, 
and  the  Pastor  of  that  church,  during  the  Revolutionary  War, 
preached  a  sermon  when  some  American  troops  were  going 
through  to  join  General  Washington  at  West  Point,  and  he 
was  so  proud  of  it  that  he  entered  it  on  the  Parish  Register. 
I  read  it  there;  it  was  a  long  sermon.  General  Howe  was 
coming  across  the  ocean  with  reinforcements  for  the  British 
in  New  York,  and  the  good  parson  said :  "  Oh,  Lord,  I  pray 
Thee  that  on  that  fleet  Thy  lightnings  will  play  and  Thy  thun- 
ders will  roar,  and  that  the  waters  may  rise  and  bury  them 
in  the  deep,  and  that  they  may  go  to  that  reward  of  eternal 
fire  where  they  will  be  properly  received,  for  Thy  glory  and 
the  safety  of  Thy  Saints,  among  this  Thy  people."  (Loud 
laughter.)  Now  that  germ  has  grown,  so  that  Brother  Birrell 
wrote  7,000  words  describing  the  procession  to  a  great  New 
York  newspaper,  and  so  that  in  every  considerable  place  in 
the  United  States  the  churches  were  open  for  religious  services 
for  the  health  and  prosperity  of  the  British  people  and  the 
King  just  consecrated.  (Applause.)  Now  these  germs,  the 
germ  of  Runnymede,  for  instance,  when  those  glorious  old 
athletes  who  did  not  think  learning  amounted  to  anything 
except  for  the  parson  and  the  lawyer,  and  therefore  with  the 
hilts  of  their  swords  put  their  mark  upon  the  seals  of  Magna 
Charta,  they  enclosed  in  that  charter  a  germ  which  in  the 
evolution  of  the  centuries  produced  the  principles  which  Jef- 
ferson wrote  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  which  Lin- 
coln wrote  in  the  proclamation  emancipating  the  slaves,  and 
which  for  you  has  created  a  democracy  which,  while  retain- 
ing the  forms  and  ceremonies  of  the  past,  has  so  united 
Medisevalism  with  Modernism  that  you  have  a  democratic 
government  more  democratic  in  its  immediate  responsiveness 
to  the  people  than  any  which  exists. 

Well,  my  friends,  since  I  have  been  here  I  have  heard 
that  there  is  a  fear,  which  mars  somewhat  the  pleasure  of 
our  visit,  that  we  are  seeking  Canada.  Now  I  want  to  assure 


22 

you  that  there  are  no  signs  of  that.  Uncle  Sam  does  not  mean 
anything  of  the  kind,  and  is  not  serious  in  his  intentions, 
though  rather  tumultuous  in  his  ardor,  and  the  beautiful  Lady 
of  the  Snows  up  North  understands  him  perfectly.  This 
reciprocity  treaty  shows  that  she  is  quite  able  to  take  care 
of  herself,  and  of  contributing  something  to  the  general  wel- 
fare of  the  Empire  to  which  she  belongs.  We  have  acquired 
within  the  last  ten  years  Hawaii  and  Porto  Rico  and  the  Phil- 
ippines, and  we  think  we  have  not,  but  still  we  have,  Cuba. 
(Loud  laughter.)  So  we  are  in  a  position  on  this  question 
of  annexation  and  of  not  wanting  any  more  territory  of  the 
opulently  gifted  lady  in  the  sense  of  avoirdupois,  who  was 
a  suburbanite,  whom  I  saw  getting  on  the  train  one  day  with 
li£r  arms  full  of  bundles,  as  suburbanite  ladies  always  are, 
and  as  she  put  a  foot  on  the  step  of  the  car  one  fell  off, 
and  when  she  picked  it  up  two  fell  off.  A  neighbor  said  to 
her,  "  I  am  detained  in  the  City  to-night,  may  I  add  this  parcel 
to  yours  for  my  wife?"  and  she  answered:  "No,  I  have 
troubles  enough  of  my  own."  .(Laughter.) 

I  have  noticed  also  that  there  is  no  difference  in  the 
evolution  of  Parliamentary  life  between  Great  Britain  and 
the  United  States.  If  I  may  be  reminiscent  for  a  moment, 
about  twenty-five  years  ago  Lord  Rosebery  invited  me  to  go 
after  dinner  to  a  Meeting  in  the  interests  of  Empire — Colonials 
and  the  like.  It  was  a  small  room  and  they  were  principally 
colonial  bishops.  There  was  no  talk  but  plenty  of  champagne 
and  cigars.  In  fact,  it  was  a  spiritual  meeting.  (Laughter.) 
Well,  there  was  not  a  word  of  it  in  next  morning's  papers. 
Twenty-five  years  have  passed,  and  in  the  hall  of  Rufus,  the 
seat  of  the  mother  of  Parliaments,  this  same  Lord  Rosebery 
recently  presided  at  a  great  banquet  to  the  colonial  representa- 
tives of  these  empires  in  themselves,  yet  all  affiliated  in  in- 
terest and  patriotism  with  the  central  government,  working 
out  their  own  destinies,  united  somewhat  as  our  States  are, 
with  our  central  government.  That  assembly  listened  to  one 
of  the  happiest  speeches  from  Lord  Rosebery,  one  of  the  most 
gifted  of  your  orators,  voicing  the  sentiment  of  Empire,  for 
Great  Britain.  Mr.  Gladstone  once  said  to  me  that  if  he 
could  select  from  among  all  the  years  of  recorded  time  a  half 


23 

century,  the  half  century  he  would  select  would  be  that  in 
which  he  had  lived,  because  it  was  a  half  century  of  emancipa- 
tion. If  he  could  have  lived  twenty-five  years  more  and  wit- 
nessed this  progress  of  which  he  never  dreamed,  he  would, 
I  think,  have  felt  that  the  half  century  which  closed  on  the 
day  "when  King  George  V.  was  anointed  and  crowned  was 
infinitely  grander  than  the  half  century  of  which  he  was  so 
proud.  I  have  been  listening  to  speeches  in  the  United  States 
Senate  for  the  last  twelve  years,  and  I  read  your  speeches 
and  I  am  still  alive.  I  notice  that  the  development  of  politics 
among  statesmen  and  politicians  is  the  same  with  you  as  it 
is  with  us,  until  a  question  is  decided.  In  one  of  the  last 
debates  in  the  Senate  when  I  was  there  six  months  ago,  a 
Senator  was  evolving  his  ideas  on  a  critical  question  in  the 
country  which  was  specially  acute  in  his  own  State,  and  he 
was  a  candidate  for  re-election.  (Laughter.)  He  was  on  the 
fence,  not,  as  one  of  your  statesmen  happily  has  said,  with 
his  flag  nailed  to  it.  A  witty  colleague  of  mine  said  "  That 
speech  reminds  me  of  an  old  farmer  in  my  State  who  came 
to  town  carrying  a  family  clock,  and  said  to  the  maker,  '  I 
do  not  know  what  is  the  matter  with  this  clock.  When  it 
strikes  twelve  and  the  hand  points  to  four,  I  know  it  is  half 
past  two,  and  nobody  knows  it  but  me.'  ':  Well,  my  friend 
President  Taft  has  done  many  happy  things  since  he  has 
been  President  of  the  United  States.  He  has  succeeded  in 
having  more  of  his  policies  enacted  into  laws  than  almost  any 
President  since  Lincoln,  his  plea  for  International  Arbitration 
marks  a  new  era  of  peace  among  nations.  He  has  been  singu- 
larly happy  in  his  appointments  to  office.  His  appointments 
to  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  have  led  to  that 
wonderful  decision  in  the  Standard  Oil  and  other  cases  which 
have  clarified  the  air  and  made  our  old  Constitution  good  for 
another  125  years,  because  now  all  great  problems  are  to  be 
judged  by  the  light  of  reason.  The  foolish  virgins  were  put 
out  of  business  because  they  had  no  oil.  Standard  Oil  is 
to  be  put  out  of  business  because  they  have  too  much. 
(Laughter.)  One  of  the  happiest  appointments  of  President 
Taft  was  when  he  determined  to  wipe  out  that  jail  record  of 
Hammond  by  making  him  Special  Ambassador  on  this  oc- 


24 

casion.  We,  as  Americans,  believe  he  could  have  made  no 
better  selection.  It  was  my  privilege  to  know  for  many  years 
the  late  King  very  well,  and  to  appreciate,  as  only  those 
could  who  knew  him  socially,  that  he  was  the  best  representa- 
tive of  an  English  gentleman  or  a  gentleman  of  any  race; 
that  he  was  the  most  hospitable  of  hosts,  the  most  charming 
of  companions,  the  most  genial  of  men;  and  that,  so  far  as 
America  and  Americans  were  concerned,  he  was  on  all  oc- 
casions bringing  all  the  power  of  his  great  place  as  Prince 
of  Wales  and  as  King  to  the  bettering  of  the  relations  between 
our  two  countries.  No  man  or  woman  arrived  here  from 
America  who  was  worthy  of  his  recognition  as  an  artist  or  who 
was  striving  for  some  distinction,  that  he  did  not  lend  every  aid 
to  put  that  person  upon  a  platform  where  that  talent  could 
be  recognized.  As  a  diplomatist,  no  one  did  so  much  to  bring 
about  peace  between  Great  Britain  and  other  countries.  Now, 
the  hope  of  every  American  represented  by  our  Special  Am- 
bassador, and  our  regular  Ambassador,  represented  by  the 
unanimous  voice  of  the  Press  of  the  United  States,  is  that  the 
popularity  with  his  own  people  and  that  the  success  as  a  King 
of  George  V.  will  be  as  great  as,  and  if  possible  greater  than. 
was  his  father's.  (Applause.) 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Banquet  Given  by  the  American 
Chamber  of  Commerce  of  Paris,  France, 
July  4,  igu. 

Baron  d'Estournelles  de  Constant,  who  had  just  returned 
from  the  United  States  on  a  mission  of  peace  by  arbitration, 
had  closed  a  brilliant  speech  describing  his  visit  and  the  result 
of  his  mission,  when  Mr.  Depew  was  asked  to  reply. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  I  dislike  at  this  late 
hour  to  break  the  charm  of  the  address  which  has  just  been 
delivered  by  my  friend  Baron  d'Estournelles  de  Constant. 
No  itinerary  of  the  United  States  will  ever  be  perfect  which 
does  not  include  his  description  of  our  cities.  No  booming 
Western  City,  especially  Denver  and  Seattle,  will  be  worthy 
of  the  ambition  which  they  have  to  outrival  New  York,  unless 
they  scatter  a  leaflet  reading  "See  what  the  baron  says  about 
us." 

The  following  little  story  about  Boston  and  Chicago,  I 
think,  fully  illustrates  the  merits  and  virtues  of  both.  A 
Boston  man  found  himself  in  Heaven,,  and  when  Saint  Peter 
called  his  attention  to  all  the  wonderful  things  there,  he 
said,  "  Yes,  very  fine,  but  it  isn't  Boston."  When  a  Chicago 
man  was  being  led  about  the  other  world  he  said  to  his  at- 
tendant, "  I  did  not  know  that  Chicago  was  so  much  like 
Heaven,"  and  the  attendant  replied,  "  Well,  you  are  not  in 
Heaven." 

I  am  not  surprised  that  after  the  visit  which  our  friend, 
the  baron,  paid  to  Salt  Lake  City  he  no  longer  keeps  quiet 
on  the  subject  of  the  girls.  Really,  the  gentleman  from 
Boston  Chamber  of  Commerce  voiced  the  sentiment  of  the 
evening  when  he  said  that  here  in  Paris  we  Americans  feel 
at  home.  There  has  been  no  missionary  going  to  the  United 
States  in  the  interest  of  peace  and  amity,  no  missionary  re- 
calling to  Americans  what  the  French  did  for  us,  no  mis- 
sionary since  Lafayette,  who  has  received  such  a  welcome, 
because  of  the  people  whom  he  represented  and  the  message 
he  brought,  as  did  the  orator  who  has  just  taken  his  seat, 


26 


our  friend  the  Baron  d'Estournelles  de  Constant.  There  are 
two  places  in  the  world  where  we  Americans  can  celebrate  the 
Fourth  of  July  with  absolute  unanimity.  Every  country 
celebrates  its  natal  day  or  its  one  great  event  within  its  own 
boundaries,  and  among  its  own  people,  but  it  is  possible 
for  Americans  to  celebrate  their  natal  day  with  enthusiasm 
on  French  territory  and  within  the  boundaries  of  our  own 
country.  People  speak  of  reciprocity  as  if  it  were  a  new 
sentiment,  a  new  doctrine  recently  discovered,  but  reciprocity 
is  125  years.  It  was  reciprocity  which  in  our  darkest  hour, 
when  we  were  without  funds,  when  our  soldiers  were  bare- 
footed, when  we  were  nearly  out  of  ammunition  and  guns, 
that  brought  to  us  the  French  Army  within,  and  the  French 
Navy  without,  and  money  and  credit. 

Now  I  am  not  a  believer  in  germs.  You  know  it  is  a 
fixed  American  idea  to  have  germs.  In  America  everybody 
is  afraid  to  drink  water  or  eat  food,  because  of  germs.  I 
have  lived  until  my  seventy-eighth  year,  and  I  have  eaten  and 
drunk  everything  that  has  come  my  way,  and  there  has  been 
going  on  in  my  veins  that  battle  which  they  say  is  continually 
raging  between  germs  of  one  hard  name  and  their  enemies 
with  another.  If  one  succeeds  you  are  a  "Conner,"  and  if  an- 
other is  victorious  you  are  safe,  but  here  I  am,  so  far  as  I  can 
see  without  impaired  digestion  or  vitality,  and  I  only  know  that 
the  results  are  entirely  satisfactory.  However,  speaking  about 
germs,  there  is  a  germ  I  do  believe  in,  and  that  is  the  germ 
in  the  origin  of  nations  and  their  development.  The  most 
noted  germ  that  has  ever  come  into  this  world  since  Christ, 
is  the  germ  of  liberty  which  appeared  in  the  United  States, 
and  was  voiced  in  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  but  that 
germ  compressed  in  this  sentence  by  Jefferson  that  "  All  men 
are  created  equal  with  certain  inalienable  rights  among  which 
are  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  "  meant  little  at 
that  time  anywhere.  In  the  United  States  was  a  landed 
aristocracy,  we  had  no  universal  suffrage,  suffrage  was  de- 
pendent upon  property,  and  France  at  that  time  was  an  ab- 
solute monarchy,  with  a  few  philosophers  writing  about  the- 
oretical liberty.  But  that  germ  in  the  course  of  135  years 
has,  in  our  country,  put  us  at  the  head  of  all  nations,  as  the 


27 

most  populous,  the  most  wealthy,  the  most  liberty  enjoying, 
the  happiest  people  in  the  world.  That  germ  came  over  here 
to  France  with  Lafayette,  Rochambeau  and  other  French 
soldiers  returning  from  America,  and  it  produced  the  French 
Revolution,  which  destroyed  absolutism  in  France,  and  through 
many  revolutions  it  has  at  last  in  our  day  led  to  a  republic 
which  will  be  as  perpetual  as  our  own. 

The  Baron  very  happily  spoke  of  dreams  and  sentiment. 
I  have  always  been  a  believer  in  dreams  and  sentiment.  I 
believe  that  sentiment  is  the  one  thing  which  has  moved  the 
world  more  than  anything  else.  Lord  Rosebery,  the  most 
eloquent  of  British  orators,  made  a  speech,  partly  serious, 
partly  badinage,  in  which  he  said  it  was  a  mistake  for  the 
American  Colonies  to  have  separated  from  Great  Britain,  be- 
cause had  they  remained,  they  would  have  drawn  the  King 
to  New  York,  Windsor  Castle  somewhere  in  Central  Park, 
and  Buckingham  Palace  in  City  Hall  Park.  Here  comes  in 
the  sentiment,  and  the  dream.  Canada  has  been  a  self-govern- 
ing colony  just  as  long  as  the  United  States  has  been  an  in- 
dependent Republic,  Australia  for  more  than  fifty  years  has 
been  a  self-governing  colony.  Canada  has  a  territory  as  large 
as  the  United  States,  two  thirds  of  which  is  quite  as  pro- 
ductive, yet  she  has  two  millions  of  inhabitants  less  than  the 
State  of  New  York.  Australia  has  a  territory  as  large  and 
as  productive  as  the  United  States,  but  has  a  population  less 
than  -New  York  City,  and  four  millions  less  than  the  State 
of  New  York ;  four  millions  in  Australia,  seven  millions  in 
Canada,  and  ninety  millions  in  the  United  States !  What  is 
the  reason  ?  Emigration  from  Europe  has  created  all  these 
countries.  People  left  Europe  to  find  civil  and  religious  lib- 
erty, but  they  have  civil  and  religious  liberty  in  Canada  and 
Australia  as  well  as  in  the  United  States.  People  left  Europe 
to  be  able  to  govern  themselves,  but  they  govern  themselves 
as  well  in  Canada  and  Australia  as  they  do  in  the  United 
States,  and  they  have  every  opportunity  we  enjoy  but  one,  and 
that  is  a  shadow.  That  shadow  is  the  sovereignty  of  Great 
Britain.  It  is  not  exercised,  except  for  their  protection.  Great 
Britain  taxes  herself  for  their  defence,  but  there  is  over  them 
the  shadow  of  a  power,  in  whose  administration  they  have  no 


28 

voice,  while  in  our  country,  on  the  contrary,  ninety  millions 
feel  independent  and  happy  because  with  us  there  is  no  shadow 
before  the  sun  of  liberty.  Its  beams  shine  undimmed  on  every 
part  of  our  land,  and  each  citizen  is  a  sovereign. 

We  have  grown  a  good  deal  since  you  of  the  Amer- 
ican Chamber  of  Commerce  of  Paris  left  to  settle  over  here, 
and  we  have  many  ideas  there  that  you  would  grasp  if  you 
came  home  more  frequently.  I  was  immensely  impressed  with 
this  the  other  day  in  London.  In  England  every  newspaper 
praises  the  King.  I  read  newspapers  of  all  kinds,  of  all  shades 
of  opinion,  and  most  of  their  columns  were  devoted  editorially 
to  praising  and  reporting  the  movements  and  popularity  of  the 
King,  while  in  America  no  newspaper  would  consider  itself 
worthy  of  circulation  if  it  did  not  criticise  the  President.  And 
yet  every  nation  must  have  some  ideals  which  the  newspapers 
won't  criticise,  and  which  will  inspire  loyalty  and  love  in  the 
citizen.  What  is  ours?  It  is  the  old  Constitution  which 
has  stood  by  us  without  change  for  125  years.  England  has 
had  twenty  changes  in  her  constitution  in  that  time.  France 
has  had  fifteen  or  twenty  new  ones,  Germany  has  had  any 
number,  even  Russia  and  Turkey  are  recognizing  the  progress 
of  liberty.  But  that  old  Constitution  of  ours  prepared  by  those 
gentlemen  in  knee  breeches,  buckles,  and  powdered  wigs, 
stood  for  three  millions  of  people  along  the  line  of  our  At- 
lantic Coast,  and  is  equally  able  to  take  care  of  ninety  mil- 
lions within  American  Territory,  and  ten  millions  in  the 
Philippines,  and  the  islands  of  the  sea  without,  and  it  has 
not  been  changed  in  its  essence  in  125  years.  That  is  our 
ideal,  but  recently  there  have  been  gentlemen  with  us  who 
delight  to  call  themselves  "  Progressive  "  and  "  Insurgents." 
I  was  associated  with  them  for  twelve  years  in  the  Senate 
very  pleasantly,  but  publicly  they  believe  in  unrest.  They 
have  been  attacking  the  Constitution  because  they  say  all 
men  do  not  have  equal  opportunities.  Then  came  the  trial 
of  the  trusts,  but  recently  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United 
States  has  rendered  a  decision  which  has  swept  the  plat- 
form out  from  under  them,  and  made  the  Constitution  good 
for  another  125  years.  That  great  decision  says  that  every 
trade  combination  in  the  United  States  which  may  be  re- 


29 

garded  as  unlawful,  must  be  judged  by  the  light  of  reason, 
and  if  individuals  or  the  corporations  do  not  possess  proper 
reasons  for  their  business  they  can  go  tp  the  Circuit  Court 
and  be  advised.  So  there  is  no  danger  of  confiscation  in  the 
United  States  any  more.  If  that  decision  had  sustained  the 
contention  of  the  lawyers  of  the  government  that  every  com- 
bination whatsoever,  whether  good  or  bad,  is  illegal,  we  would 
have  had  chaos,  and  the  greatest  panic  the  world  ever  knew, 
until  we  could  have  readjusted  ourselves,  but  in  the  light 
of  reason  we  are  all  right.  In  the  light  of  reason  the  foolish 
virgins  had  no  oil,  so  they  were  not  allowed  to  the  wedding 
feast,  and  by  the  light  of  reason  the  Standard  Oil  had  too 
much — and  must  reorganize. 

We  have  another  thing  in  our  country  in  which  we  are 
superior  to  all  others,  and  that  is  though  we  have  parties 
we  have  no  political  animosities.  The  representatives  of  both 
parties -in  the  Senate  and  the  House  of  Representatives  dis- 
cuss in  an  academic  way  the  things  upon  which  they  differ 
without  personal  rancor  or  enmity.  But  when  I  was  over 
in  England  the  other  day,  I  discovered  that  they  had  got  to 
a  point  where  we  were  at  the  close  of  the  Civil  War,  with 
the  same  passions  and  the  same  bitterness — especially  among 
the  women.  When  the  women  are  bitter  in  politics,  you 
may  make  up  your  mind  that  a  remarkable  evolution  is  in 
progress.  I  was  sitting  the  other  night  at  dinner  talking  to 
a  charming  Englishwoman  of  high  social  position  and  rank 
and  of  broad  sympathies  and  benevolence,  who  is  doing  good 
in  every  way  that  will  benefit  her  people,  and  somehow,  as 
always  happens  now  in  England,  the  conversation  switched 
round  to  the  present  political  crisis,  and  the  enormous  impend- 
ing changes  in  their  constitution — including  the  abolition  of  the 
Upper  Chamber,  and  she  said :  "  Do  you  know  I  wish  we  were 
back  in  the  good  old  days.  I  would  like  to  assist  in  hanging 
every  member  of  the  Government,  and  as  for  Winston 
Churchill  I  would  like  to  see  him  tortured  first,  and  then  put  on 
the  string."  I  like  Winston  Churchill  and  respect  his  great 
abilities.  I  was  fond  of  his  father,  and  am  a  great  ad- 
mirer of  his  mother.  He  is  a  brilliant  young  man  destined 
to  a  most  promising  future.  I  am  a  great  admirer  of 


30 

Asquith.  He  is  a  very  able  statesman,  and  as  an  American 
I  should  feel  bad  to  see  him  hung  on  a  string.  We  have 
no  such  sentiment  as  that  in  the  United  States.  Over  in 
London  they  said  to  me:  "How  can  you  talk  of  arbitration 
and  peace  when  you  are  trying  to  steal  Canada  indirectly  ?  " 
Great  Scott,  gentlemen,  we  have  got  ice  enough  of  our  own. 
We  keep  eggs  in  cold  storage  for  a  year,  and  we  have  our 
own  problems,  which  are  quite  sufficient.  We  have  the  Phil- 
ippines— whose  people  say  they  want  to  be  free,  in  a  way 
that  will  permit  them  to  do  as  they  please,  but  leave  us  the 
expense  of  maintaining  their  government  and  protecting  them. 
We  have  Guam,  Hawaii,  and  Porto  Rico,  and  we  sometimes 
think  we  have  got  rid  of  Cuba.  I  also  said  to  my  English 
friends:  "We  have  the  South  American  Republics,  who  get 
all  they  can  of  English,  German,  and  French  money,  and  then 
when  a  Dreadnought  goes  over  to  collect  it,  they  say  to  Uncle 
Sam :  "  The  sacred  Monroe  Doctrine  must  be  safeguarded 
by  you."  Our  inventors  at  home  are  in  the  way  of  help- 
ing everybody.  There  is  Mr.  Burbank,  the  wizard  of  Cali- 
fornia. Not  long  ago  he  visited  Pittsburgh,  and  when  he  went 
home  he  commenced  practising  on  the  succulent  which  we  all 
love  so  well — the  pea — and  he  has  succeeded  in  producing  a 
square  pea  which  will  not  roll  off  the  blade  of  multi-mil- 
lionaires who  still  eat  with  a  knife. 

Well,  my  friends,  I  think  the  sentiment  of  this  Fourth  of 
July  Banquet — I  have  been  to  nearly  all  that  this  Chamber 
has  celebrated,  and  each  one  has  had  some  sentiment  of  its 
own — all  of  them  for  international  commerce  and  goodwill — 
but  this  Fourth  of  July  Banquet  voices  another  and  more 
universal  sentiment  than  any  of  its  predecessors,  and  its  grand 
apostle  is  our  guest  here  to-night — Baron  d'Estournelles  de 
Constant.  This  is  a  celebration  largely  in  the  interest  of  Peace 
by  Arbitration.  Commencing  with  Abraham  Lincoln  I  have 
known  every  President  of  the  United  States  very  well,  known 
them  in  their  peculiarities,  in  their  faults,  in  their  good  qual- 
ities, and  in  their  great  ones.  For  everyone  of  them  was  a 
great  man,  or  he  could  not  have  been  by  the  suffrage  of  the 
American  people  President  of  the  United  States.  But  of  all 
those  Presidents,  how  many  will  be  remembered  100  years 


from  now?  Lincoln,  whom  I  first  knew,  yes,  so  long  as  the 
Republic  endures.  Grant  ?  Yes,  but  among  the  rest !  Now 
we  have  a  President  who  differs  from  all  others  I  have  known, 
because  of  characteristics  I  have  never  met  in  a  politician 
anywhere,  and  I  think  it  is  because  his  education  has  been  not 
political  but  judicial.  He  has  been  most  of  his  life  on  the 
bench,  but  there  it  has  been  his  habit  to  listen  patiently  to  the 
arguments  of  both  sides,  to  render  his  decision  according  to 
the  law  and  the  Constitution,  and  then  dismiss  it,  never  think- 
ing of  himself  one  moment,  nor  how  that  decision  would  affect 
his  own  fortunes,  and  so  in  the  three  years  in  which  Taft  has 
been  President  he  has  succeeded  in  securing  the  enactment 
into  law  of  more  of  his  recommendations  than  almost  any 
President  of  my  time,  and  yet  the  underlying  sentiment  with 
him  has  been,  "  This  is  right.  The  majority  of  my  people  may 
be  against  it,  but  I  think  they  are  mistaken.  My  judgment  is  it 
is  the  best  for  the  country.  I  cannot  for  a  moment  consider 
its  effect  upon  my  future."  Mr.  Taft,  a  man  unaffected  by 
passion,  partisanship,  or  faction  at  home  has  looked  abroad 
over  the  great  field  of  international  amity,  brought  to  his  at- 
tention while  Governor  of  the  Philippines,  and  has  set  forth 
to  the  world  (and  that  is  to  be  his  monument)  a  Message  of 
Peace.  While  all  nations  are  building  larger  battleships,  in- 
creasing the  number  of.  their  armies,  and  offering  the  highest 
rewards  for  inventions  in  destructive  machinery  and  explosives, 
this  calm  Executive  of  the  United  States  conceives  the  idea 
that  possibly  even  now  there  may  be  brought  about  such  rela- 
tions between  the  different  countries  of  the  world  that  war 
may  be  abolished  and  peace  established,  and  commerce  and 
amity  be  the  governing  principles  of  international  relations. 
Taft  will  live,  because  a  principle  like  this,  once  started  never 
stops,  and  as  President  of  the  United  States  he  has  already 
secured  the  cordial  assent  of  Great  Britain  and  France,  and  he 
will  live  because  he  has  brought  into  the  relations  of  the  peo- 
ple of  the  world  a  recognition  of  the  principle  which  was 
founded  on  Calvary,  and  which  has  never  yet  been  realized. 
Peace  among  nations  and  Brotherhood  among  men. 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  a  Meeting  in  Memory  of  Cornelius  N. 
Bliss,  held  by  the  Republican  Club  of  the 
City  of  New  York,  on  Sunday  Afternoon, 
November  5,  1911. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  It  is  a  most  appro- 
priate and  fitting  function  of  this  Club  that  it  should  meet  to 
pay  tribute  to  the  memory  of  Cornelius  N.  Bliss.  He  was 
one  of  the  oldest  of  its  members  and  one  of  its  Presidents. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  active  of  our  associates  in  the  public 
work  of  this  organization.  The  principles  for  which  the  club 
stands  and  for  which  it  has  always  labored  were  the  ones  in 
which  he  firmly  believed.  That  belief  was  not  perfunctory 
nor  found  its  activity  in  the  mere  expression  of  opinion.  He 
thought  business  prosperity  and  the  employment  of  labor 
and  capital  and  content  and  happiness  among  the  people  were 
dependent  upon  these  principles  being  crystallized  into  laws. 
With  that  view  he  gave  without  stint  both  personal  effort  and 
contributions  for  the  promotion  of  the  cause. 

When  he  came  to  New  York  in  1866,  forty-five  years 
ago,  mercantile  conditions  in  this  city  were  such  that  a  new- 
comer had  only  a  fighting  chance  in  the  field.  Our  merchants 
had  a  national  and  international  reputation  and  were  jealous 
to  the  point  of  active  hostilities  of  any  competition  in  their 
various  lines.  A.  T.  Stewart,  the  Grinnells,  Howland,  Aspin- 
wall,  and  a  few  others,  were  the  merchant  princes  of  the 
times.  The  financial  situation  made  the  conduct  of  enter- 
prises, and  especially  the  starting  of  new  ones,  exceedingly 
hazardous.  We  had  just  come  out  of  the  Civil  War  and  the 
country  had  not  adjusted  itself  to  normal  conditions.  We 
had  an  irredeemable  currency  and  as  its  necessary  adjunct  the 
wildest  speculation.  The  methods  now  of  limiting  competition 
are  for  those  who  are  engaged  in  the  various  branches  of  the 
production  of  articles  based  upon  a  common  product  of  raw 
material  to  combine  into  great  corporations.  Against  this 


34 

method  of  either  preventing  or  of  limiting  competition,  Con- 
gress, Legislatures  and  courts  are  actively  at  war.  Methods  of 
accomplishing  the  same  results  forty-five  years  ago  were  more 
effective  and  much  simpler.  The  day  of  the  great  corporations 
had  not  arrived,  but  the  day  of  the  masterful  man  was  here, 
as  it  has  been  for  thousands  of  years  and  will  be  for  thousands 
of  years  to  come,  in  every  community,  great  or  small.  A.  T. 
Stewart  was  the  pioneer  in  what  is  now  known  as  the  depart- 
ment store.  He  was  a  genius  in  his  line  and  his  shrewdest 
and  keenest  commercial  sense  was  based  upon  a  liberal  edu- 
cation. When  a  competitor  was  doing  a  prosperous  business 
in  one  of  the  lines  which  he  sold;  he  immediately  investigated 
his  condition.  If  it  was  cottons  or  silks  or  woolens,  or  what 
not,  that  was  this  merchant's  specialty,  Stewart  soon  became 
familiar  with  his  financial  standing,  with  the  quality  of  his 
goods  and  with  the  elements  of  his  success.  Then  by  wide 
advertisements  he  would  sell  that  special  product  away  below 
cost,  relying  upon  the  profit  in  other  departments  to  make  up 
his  own  losses  at  the  same  time  that  this  ruinous  competition 
drove  the  competitor  into  bankruptcy.  If  he  was  a  man  of 
ability  who  was  desirable,  Stewart  would  annex  him  as  an  em- 
ploye, but  if  there  was  no  place  the  poor  fellow  joined  the  ranks 
of  the  unsuccessful  and  the  unfortunate.  It  is  an  interesting 
question  whether  this  merciless  method  which  no  law  could 
reach  is  better  than  combinations  in  a  corporation,  provided 
that  corporation's  activities  are  governed  by  proper  super- 
vision by  a  bureau  of  the  government  to  prevent  monopoly 
and  restraint  of  trade. 

Mr.  Bliss  had  to  meet,  as  his  business  grew,  the  full  force 
of  this  terrific  onslaught.  It  shows  how  thoroughly  he  had 
studied  his  field,  how  well  he  was  entrenched  in  his  sources 
of  supply  and  distribution  that  he  successfully  resisted  the 
attack  and  compelled  recognition  from  these  powerful  inter- 
ests as  one  who  was  able  both  to  take  care  of  himself,  and,  if 
the  struggle  became  too  intense,  to  make  it  exceedingly  un- 
comfortable for  them. 

The  frightful  waste  of  the  Civil  War,  the  wild  speculation 
which  followed,  the  trafficking  in  legislation  to  secure  fran- 
chises to  be  madly  promoted,  culminated  in  six  years  after  Mr. 


35 

Bliss  entered  upon  business  here  in  the  disastrous  panic  of 
1873.  Only  one  like  it,  that  of  1837,  had  any  parallel  with  us 
and  few  had  been  known  in  the  whole  history  of  finance  and 
commerce.  The  Stock  Exchange  closed,  banks  suspended, 
mercantile  houses  went  into  bankruptcy,  and  thousands  were 
reduced  from  affluence  to  poverty  and  other  thousands  saw 
business  which  they  had  spent  a  lifetime  in  building  up  shat- 
tered to  pieces.  A  statistician  has  proved  that  only  one  out 
of  two  hundred  of  the  men  who  enter  mercantile  business  in 
New  York  survive-the  strain  and  competition.  The  rest  sooner 
or  later  succumb.  But  in  the  panic  of  1873  this  average  of 
one  in  two  hundred  went  to  a  point  where  it  might  safely  be 
said  that  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  business  men  came  to 
grief.  It  was  eminently  a  time  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
Only  level  heads  who  had  resisted  the  speculations  in  which 
vast  fortunes  were  made  and  lost  between  the  close  of  the 
Civil  War  and  the  panic,  far-sighted  brains  which  had  fore- 
seen the  storm  and  prepared  for  it,  were  equal  to  the  emer- 
gency. It  is  a  tribute  to  the  sagacity  of  Mr.  Bliss,  to  the 
standing  which  he  had  attained  in  these  few  years  with  the 
banks,  and  among  his  associates  and  competitors,  that  he  came 
out  of  this  terrific  struggle  with  his  credit  enhanced  and  his 
position  invulnerable. 

After  that  his  life  as  a  merchant  was  one  of  widening 
influence  and  operations.  The  financial  disturbances  which 
shook  the  country,  disturbed  business  and  ruined  individuals 
and  firms,  growing  out  of  the  resumption  of  specie  payments, 
of  the  silver  craze,  of  the  gold  standard,  were  all  foreseen 
and  provided  for  by  this  able,  accomplished  and  masterful 
man.  So  that  years  before  his  death  he  was,  in  its  best  sense, 
a  merchant  prince  and  had  so  systematized,  co-ordinated  and 
perfected  his  great  business  that  he  could  give  more  and  more 
of  his  time  to  public  affairs  and  to  his  duties  as  a  citizen.  It 
is  this  phase  of  his  career  as  a  public  citizen  that  especially 
interests  us.  The  New  York  merchant  and  business  man  is 
proverbially  neglectful  of  civic  duties  and  unwilling  to  assume 
the  burdens  of  civic  responsibilities. 

When  I  was  a  young  man  I  was  given  a  dinner  by  the  lead- 
ing merchants  of  New  York  for  something  which  I  had  done 


36 

for  the  city  as  a  Member  of  the  Legislature.  I  think  it  was  in 
1863.  Having  lived  all  my  life  in  the  country  where  everybody 
participates  in  political  activities,  I  was  amazed  to  discover  that 
of  the  thirty  gentlemen  at  this  table,  representing  three-fourths 
of  the  wealth  and  great  business  of  the  city,  not  one  of  them 
ever  voted  except  in  Presidential  elections,  none  of  them  be- 
longed to  political  clubs  or  party  organizations.  All  of  them 
united  in  vigorous  denunciations  of  the  corruptions  of  public 
life  and  the  untrustworthiness  of  men  who  held  public  office. 
These  were  conditions  which  they  as  a  united  body  could  have 
at  any  time  corrected,  but  they  not  only  refused  to  serve,  they 
put  a  ban  upon  the  professional  or  business  activities  of  those 
who  were  willing  to  enter  upon  the  duties  of  public  life. 

Mr.  Bliss  represented  an  entirely  different  class  of  great 
merchants.  Following  the  injunction  to  "Be  diligent  in  busi- 
ness, serving  the  Lord"  meant  for  him  in  practice  diligence  in 
business  as  much  as  any  successful  man,  but  he  believed  the 
best  service  he  could  render  to  the  Lord  outside  his  business 
duties  was  active,  intelligent  and  helpful  citizenship.  He  be- 
lieved that  neither  his  business  as  a  manufacturer  and  a  mer- 
chant nor  any  other  would  be  permanently  successful  unless 
a  protective  tariff,  a  sound  currency  and  the  gold  standard 
was  part  of  the  law  of  the  land.  He  .believed  that  it  was  his 
highest  duty  to  labor  for  the  success  of  the  party  and  the  can- 
didates which  would  secure  this  legislation.  He  recognized,  as 
few  men  did  then,  but  as  everybody  does  now,  the  intimate 
relation  there  is  between  business  and  politics.  Almost  imme- 
diately on  becoming  a  resident  of  our  city  he  joined  the  local 
Republican 'organization.  Throughout  his  whole  life  he  was 
an  organization  party  man  and  at  the  same  time  a  practical 
reformer.  Twice  during  his  career,  when  the  county  organi- 
zation seemed  inefficient  or  corrupt,  he  organized  and  headed 
committees  which  succeeded  in  bringing  about  the  necessary 
reform.  With  rare  courage  for  one  whose  business  could  be 
so  easily  affected  by  municipal  legislation  and  municipal  offi- 
cials, he  organized  and  headed  committees  for  the  purification 
of  the  government  of  this  great  city. 

In  all  this  long  and  active  career,  extending  over  half  a 
century,  he  never  was  an  office  seeker.  He  believed  that  office 


37 

should  come  to  a  man  and  not  be  solicited.  The  party  wanted 
at  different  times  so  rare  a  character  to  strengthen  its  position 
by  becoming  its  candidate  for  the  various  offices  within  its 
gift,  but  he  declined  everything  except  at  the  earnest  solicita- 
tion of  President  McKinley  of  the  Secretaryship  of  the  Inte- 
rior. The  unselfishness  of  his  political  activities  is  best  illus- 
trated by  the  positions  which  he  did  take.  For  four  successive 
Presidential  campaigns  he  was  the  Treasurer  of  the  National 
rommittee.  There  is  no  place  in  party  work  which  involves 
so  much  labor,  so  much  criticism  and  so  little  applause.  He 
accepted  the  treasurership  of  the  National  Committee  in  the 
second  Harrison  campaign  because  he  saw  that  there  had  come 
about  one  of  those  revulsions  in  public  feeling  which  might 
lead  to  disaster  to  the  party  he  loved  and  to  the  principles 
he  considered  essential  for  the  public  welfare.  The  peo- 
ple wanted  a  change  and  no  effort  could  check  their  desire. 
The  change  came  and  he  saw  in  its  results  all  the  business 
disasters  which  he  had  been  predicting  his  active  life.  He 
saw  what  he  regarded  as  the  greatest  bulwark  of  prosperity 
of  business  in  the  tariff  assailed  and  changed.  He  saw 
the  closing  of  mills  and  multitudes  thrown  out  of  employ- 
ment by  results  brought  about  by  legislation  which  he  abhorred. 
When  the  campaign  came  for  the  first  election  of  McKinley 
he  again  accepted  the  treasurership,  because  he  believed  that  a 
return  to  old  policies  was  the  salvation  of  his  country  and  of 
himself  in  his  business  relations.  No  one  contributed  more  to 
the  success  of  President  McKinley  and  the  restoration  of 
Republican  policies  than  did  Mr.  Bliss. 

We  are  a  peculiar  people.  We  are  fond  of  experiments  in 
every  department  of  life.  We  take  larger  chances  in  business 
and  greater  risks  in  experiment  than  any  industrial  nation  in 
the  world.  Prosperity  does  not  satisfy  us;  we  want  more. 
Within  certain  almost  defined  cycles  we  as  a  people  need  to 
go  to  school — the  school  of  experience.  A  generation  comes 
upon  the  stage  which  has  forgotten  or  is  too  young  to  remem- 
ber the  teachings  of  the  past.  When  these  periods  arrive,  and 
they  will  in  the  future  as  they  have  in  the  past,  the  lesson 
which  is  taught  by  disasters  to  business,  to  employment  and 
to  every  form  of  activity,  will  bring  about  again  the  practice  of 


38 

the  principles  which  have  proved  successful  and  they  will  pre- 
vail until  the  period  of  experiment  has  again  arrived. 

So,  Mr.  Bliss,  feeling  that  the  first  four  years  of  McKinley 
had  not  yet  consolidated  into  permanency  the  measures  in 
which  he  believed,  undertook  this  same  difficult  and  disagree- 
able task  for  the  third  time  and  in  the  Roosevelt  campaign  for 
the  fourth  of  Treasurer  of  the  National  Committee.  He  ap- 
plied to  this  delicate  and  perilous  position  principles  upon 
which  he  had  conducted  his  own  business.  The  books  were 
perfectly  kept  and  the  accounting  was  complete.  Not  a  breath 
of  suspicion,  not  a  charge  of  any  kind,  ever  assailed  the  treas- 
urer in  these  four  great  campaigns  in  which  millions  were 
raised,  part  of  it  by  himself,  and  all  of  it  passed  through  his 
hands. 

There  is  one  place  in  the  Cabinet  which  is  in  a  measure 
the  despair  of  every  President.  All  others  of  his  advisers  but 
the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  can  win  applause  and  fame.  But 
the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  has  against  him  constant  pres- 
sure, and  if  he  is  upright,  aggressive  and  intelligent,  he  will 
receive  the  virulent  abuse  and  misrepresentation  of  the  most 
powerful  interests  in  the  country.  Land  hunger  would  sacrifice 
every  right  of  the  Indian  and  take  from  him  the  land  upon 
which  he  lives  and  the  home  in  which  he  dwells.  If  the  Secre- 
tary objects  he  can  expect  only  investigating  committees  and 
unlimited  abuse.  The  exploiters  of  national  resources  wish 
to  monopolize  them  and  they  form  syndicates  so  powerful  and 
backed  by  so  much  newspaper  support  and  Congressional  in- 
fluence that  if  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  fails  to  yield  to 
their  demands  he  becomes  the  enemy  of  progress  and  the  foe  of 
the  people.  A  large  number  of  Indian  contractors  and  Indian 
agents,  who  engage  in  practices  which  are  often  corrupt  and 
sometimes  inhuman,  have  powerful  friends  to  protect  them  and 
easy  ways  of  reaching  the  public  ear  against  an  uncompromis- 
ing public  official.  It  was  to  clean  this  Augean  stable  that 
President  McKinley  summoned  to  his  aid  the  great  reputation, 
incorruptible  integrity,  unsurpassed  business  judgment  and 
executive  ability  of  Cornelius  N.  Bliss.  When  this  high  but 
disagreeable  task  had  been  completed  to  the  entire  satisfaction 
of  the  President,  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  asked  to  be  re- 


39 

leased  that  he  might  return  to  his  neglected  personal  affairs, 
and  at  the  same  time  give  that  large  measure  which  he  had 
always  so  freely  bestowed  as  a  private  citizen  to  the  public 
service. 

Gentlemen,  we  of  this  Club  who  met  him  in  the  intimacy 
of  this  family  circle  saw  in  the  successful  man  of  business 
not  the  uncompromising  reformer,  not  the  rigid  financier,  not 
the  active  politician,  but  the  most  genial,  companionable  and 
lovable  of  men.  Going  to  his  reward  when  nearing  four  score, 
he  has  left  behind  him  a  superb  example  for  American  youth 
and  filled  a  brilliant  page  in  the  history  of  his  country. 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Dinner  of  the  New  England  Society  of 
New  York,  December  22,  1911,  in  Response 
to  the  Toast :  "  The  Puritan  Survival." 

MR.  /PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  For  over  forty  years 
it  has  been  my  privilege  to  attend,  more  or  less  frequently,  the 
annual  dinners  of  the  New  England  Society  of  New  York. 
At  these  meetings  I  have  heard  .many  admirable  presenta- 
tions in  response  to  Forefathers'  Day,  but  few,  if  any  of 
them,  reached  the  high  level  of  the  speech  just  delivered 
by  Dr.  Frothingham.  He  has  caught  and  portrayed  the 
spirit  of  the  founders,  and  its  influence  in  the  development 
of  government  in  succeeding  generations,  with  a  compre- 
hensive and  broad-minded  grasp  of  the  situation  which  will 
place  in  our  records  a  classic  and  a  model.  Such  an  oc- 
casion is  suggestive  with  reminiscence.  There  have  been 
famous  nights  with  this  Society  of  national  and  international 
significance.  In  that  period  great  orators  from  all  over  the 
country  have  here  sprung  into  fame,  increased  their  reputa- 
tions or  lost  them.  The  finest  original  wit  of  our  period, 
who  was  President,  and  a  frequent  speaker,  was  William 
M.  Evarts.  In  variety  and  genius  in  portraying  and  arousing 
emotions  and  spontaneous  eloquence,  we  had  here  Henry  Ward 
Beecher.  The  list  would  include  nearly  every  man  whose  name 
has  been  associated  with  American  history  during  the  last  half 
century. 

I  recall  one  night  which  was  significant,  dramatic  and 
historical.  The  passions  of  the  Civil  War  were  not  wholly 
dissipated.  It  was  still  possible  to  arouse  enthusiasm  and  to 
make  political  capital  upon  slavery  and  disunion.  General 
Sherman  in  an  impromptu  speech,  full  of  that  nervous  fire 
which  was  his  characteristic,  threw  a  picture  on  the  wall  of 
the  disbandment  of  the  Union  Army,  the  triumphant  march 
of  the  soldiers  past  the  President  and  the  return  of  the  veterans 
to  prosperous  homes  and  their  various  vocations.  It  was  a 
picture  of  grand  triumph  that  equalled  the  historic  description 


42 

of  the  wonderful  processions  of  Roman  conquerors  down  the 
Appian  Way  into  the  imperial  city.  A  young  man  from  the 
South  came  next.  He  drew  a  most  marvelous  and  pathetic 
picture  of  the  Confederate  soldiers,  beaten  but  undismayed, 
ragged  and  foot-sore,  going  back  to  farms  which  had  been 
ravaged  by  the  armies  of  both  sides,  the  fences  down,  the 
houses  gone,  the  stock  disappeared,  and  then,  speaking  as  a 
young  man  for  the  new  South,  he  pictured  the  regeneration 
which  had  come  in  agriculture,  in  industries,  in  the  develop- 
ment of  resources,  in  the  creation  of  cities,  towns,  hamlets 
and  homes  out  of  all  this  misery  by  these  heroes  of  the  same 
race  but  inspired  by  different  ideas.  By  that  speech  Henry  W. 
Grady  leaped  into  national  fame.  But  these  ,two  addresses, 
one  from  the  great  soldier  and  the  other  from  the  represen- 
tative of  the  new  South,  published  everywhere  and  read  in 
every  household,  advanced  the  cause  of  reunion  between  the 
two  sections  of  the  country  more  than  could  have  been  accom- 
plished by  half  a  century  of  discussion  and  legislation. 

In  a  way  this  night  to  which  I  have  referred  illustrates 
the  effectiveness  of  the  dominant  principles  of  the  Pilgrim 
idea — "free  speech."  The  Pilgrims  were  reformers.  They 
were  about  the  only  real  ones  of  their  period.  Madame 
Roland,  standing  at  the  foot  of  the  scaffold,  as  she  ascended 
the  steps  cried  out: 

"Oh,  Liberty!  in  thy  name  what  crimes  are  committed." 
So  reform,  which  is  always  popular,  is  the  well-worn 
ladder  of  ambition,  demagoguery  and  greed.  There  is  the 
reformer  who  quickly  grasps  the  passion  of  the  hour  and  by 
fanning  it  into  flame  becomes  its  leader  and  gets  into  Congress 
or  higher.  There  is  the  other  who  is  part  demagogue  and 
part  crank  and  wholly  an  agitator,  who  contributes  little  to  the 
progress  of  the  world;  but  there  is  last  the  man  of  foresight, 
courage  and  patriotism,  who  is  always  in  advance  of  his  time, 
not  so  far  ahead  but  his  contemporaries  can  catch  up,  but  who 
is  far  enough  to  blaze  the  way  and  lead  them  by  reason  toward 
light  and  liberty.  To  this  latter  class  the  Pilgrims  preemi- 
nently belong.  They  lived  in  an  age  when  might  made  right, 
when  it  was  considered  entirely  proper  to  seize  the  goods  of 
others  if  you  had  the  power  and  needed  them.  But  when  the 


43 

Mayflower  anchored  off  Cape  Cod  and  a  boat  with  the  ex- 
plorers went  ashore  and  the  Indians  fled  leaving  behind  the 
corn  which  they  had  stored  for  the  winter,  it  was  promptly 
appropriated  and  taken  on  board  the  ship.  This  was  in  accord- 
ance with  the  principles  of  the  age.  The  Pilgrims  needed  the 
corn,  without  it  they  could  not  have  planted  for  the  next  year's 
harvest,  but  they  left  a  note  saying  that  they  would  pay  for  it 
whenever  the  Indians  called  and  presented  proper  vouchers. 
The  fact  that  they  left  no  address  did  not  militate  against  the 
merit  of  the  case.  It  was  the  beginning  of  that  beneficent 
principle,  now  recognized  everywhere  among  civilized  nations, 
of  the  sanctity  of  property  in  the  hands  of  the  weak.  Though 
the  old  rule  still  prevails  in  the  partition  of  Africa  by  the 
great  powers — thank  Heaven,  this  government  of  the  Pilgrims 
has  no  part  in  that  expropriation. 

In  the  Pilgrim  period  all  governments  had  one  set  of  laws 
for  kings  and  nobles  and  another  for  the  people,  one  set  of 
rights  for  caste  and  privilege  and  another  for  those  who  had 
neither.  But  the  Pilgrims  in  the  cabin  of  the  Mayflower  in 
their  immortal  charter  said,  "We  will  found  a  government  of 
just  and  equal  laws."  That  was  a  principle  which  was  under- 
standable, and  again  the  Pilgrims  were  in  advance,  but  not 
too  far  in  advance,  of  the  period  in  which  'they  lived  and 
labored.  It  took  a  long  time,  even  in  our  own  development, 
to  work  out  that  principle.  The  Puritan  who  came  afterward 
to  the  Massachusetts  colonies  repudiated  it  utterly.  But  there 
is  nothing  so  dynamic  as  an  idea  which  has  in  it  the  principal 
of  generation  and  regeneration.  Winthrop  said,  "If  all  are  to 
be  Governors,  who  is  to  govern.''  There  being  no  lawyers, 
New  England  existed  for  a  hundred  years  without  lawyers, 
and  as  they  recognized  the  necessity  of  government  they  con- 
fided it  to  their  ministers  and  created  a  theocracy.  The  gov- 
ernment of  the  ministers  demonstrated  the  necessity  in  the 
enactment  of  laws  of  the  assistance  of  lawyers.  They  banished 
Roger  Williams  and  Anne  Hutchinson  because  they  preached 
religious  toleration,  and  in  banishing  them  the  dynamics  of 
religious  toleration  began  to  expand  and  in  less  than  half  a 
century  that  had  become  part  of  both  Pilgrim  and  Puritan 
policy. 


44 

These  hard-headed,  hard-working,  close-thinking  fore- 
fathers believed  in  representative  government.  Though  they 
had  the  town  meeting,  a  perfect  democracy,  for  their  village 
and  local  affairs,  yet  they  felt  that  there  should  be  trained 
men  selected -and  elected  to  make  their  laws,  so  they  left -it 
first  to  the  clergy  and  then  selected  in  their  localities  the  men 
who  could  give  the  time  and  who  were  best  equipped  to  be 
members  of  the  Legislatures  and  Congress,  and  to  be  gov- 
ernors and  judges. 

In  some  of  the  newer  States  they  are  getting  away  from 
this  idea.  We  are  told  now  that  the  best  government  is  that 
which  goes  to  the  whole  people  with  all  its  laws  and  all  its 
legislation,  that  the  initiative,  the  referendum  and  the  recall 
place  the  people  in  possession  of  the  power  which  they  have 
lost  through  selecting  men  to  be  their  governors,  their  judges, 
their  legislators,  their  mayors  and  their  aldermen. 

I  met  the  other  night  at  dinner  the  Governor  of  Oregon, 
the  foremost  State  in  putting  into  practice  these  policies,  a 
charming,  capable  and  eloquent  gentleman.  His  mission,  and 
that  of  the  Governors,  was  not  political  but  to  make  known 
the  products  of  their  States.  Of  course,  one  of  the  most 
attractive  is  the  Oregon  apple.  He  showed  how  Oregon  re- 
.  versed  her  new-  principle  of  government  by  mass  meeting  in 
placing  apples  on  the  market.  The  farmers  select  a  committee 
of  experts.  The  individual  farmer  is  not  permitted  to  market 
as  of  old,  when  his  good  apples  were  on  top,  the  moderate 
ones  in  the  middle  and  the  bad  in  the  rest  of  the  barrel.  These 
experts,  representatives  of  the  mass,  select  the  best  apples 
and  sell  them  as  such  and  the  second  best  and  sell  them  as 
such,  and  make  the  rest  into  hard  cider  to  be  drunk  in  prohibi- 
tion communities.  Now,  the  distinguished,  eloquent  and  able 
Senator  from  Oregon  is  the  best  advocate  and  exponent  of 
the  political  practices  of  his  State.  His  view  condensed  is  that 
the  composite  citizen,  which  means  the  whole  mass,  is  more  in- 
telligent for  executive  duties  than  any  governor,  or  for  judicial 
duties  than  any  judge,  or  for  legislation  than  any  legislator,  and, 
therefore,  we  need  only  a  framework  of  officers  without  power 
or  authority  to  be  instructed  by  this  composite  man.  So,  in- 
stead of  having  able  executives  and  learned  judges  and  tried 


45 

and  experienced  legislators,  these  officers  are  rubber  stamps 
for  the  composite  man.  But  the  composite  man,  acting  as  a 
mass  upon  subjects  that  he  cannot  possibly  act  upon  intelli- 
gently if  he  attends  to  his  business,  is  necessarily  composed 
of  the  selected  apples,  the  specked  apples  and  the  bad  apples. 
His  selection  of  representatives  is  usually  excellent,  but  his 
executive  acts,  judicial  decisions  and  legislation  under  such 
conditions  are  permeated  with  the  inebriating  qualities  of  the 
headiest  hard  cider. 

Our  forefathers  in  developing  the  country  left  the  largest 
freedom  of  action  to  the  individual  citizen.  The  common  law 
was  the  spirit  of  their  jurisprudence  and  judicial  decisions. 
Their  legislation  was  to  promote  agriculture  and  industries  and 
develop  resources.  They  were  not  equal  to  the  enactment  of  a 
Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law,  and  would  not  have  understood  it 
if  they  had  been.  Shakespeare  says,  "Some  are  born  great, 
some  achieve  greatness  and  some  have  greatness  thrust  upon 
them."  John  Sherman  was  an  excellent  Senator  and  a  distin- 
guished Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  but  he  would  have  dropped 
into  the  oblivion  of  Senators  and  Secretaries  of  the  Treasury 
out  of  office  and  been  forgotten  except  that  the  trust  law  which 
bears  his  name  has  kept  him  before  the  public  more  than  any 
statesman  of  his  period  and  made  him  immortal.  Now  comes 
a  few  days  ago  ex-Senator  Edmunds,  the  distinguished  Chair- 
man of  the  Judiciary  Committee  which  had  charge  of  that 
bill,  perfected,  reported  and  passed  it,  who  informs  us  that 
there  is  not  in  it  one  single  line  of  John  Sherman.  This  is  not 
going  to  take  away  the  fame  of  Sherman ;  resting  solely 
upon  a  myth  it  is  in  no  more  danger  than  the  name  of  America 
though  not  discovered  by  Amerigo  Vespucci.  There  is  not  a 
single  thing  about  that  law  which  is  not  Pilgrim  or  Puritan, 
but  while  it  affects  every  industry  in  the  country,  it  has  lain 
practically  dormant  for  twenty  years.  The  main  reason  being 
that  nobody  really  understood  it.  National  Conventions  of 
both  parties  in  their  platforms  resolved  that  it  must  be 
amended,  but  it  was  such  a  feitish  in  the  public  mind  that  one 
party  was  afraid  to  touch  it  and  the  other  daren't.  It  was 
interpreted  at  one  time  to  prohibit  all  big  business  and  restore 
the  country  to  the  retail  store,  the  windmill  and  the  mill  pond. 


46 

That  would  have  prevented  all  development.  It  has  at  other 
times  been  differently  interpreted.  So  far  as  doing  business 
under  it  was  concerned  during  these  twenty  years,  the  business 
man  felt  thai  they  were  in  a  position  which  was  described  by 
that  famous  revivalist  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century, 
Lorenzo  Dow.  He  preached  a  sermon  in  Peekskill,  which  was 
a  strong  Calvinistic  neighborhood,  the  echo  of  which  still 
lingers  in  the  hills  and  valleys.  In  this  he  said  in  regard  to 
predestination  that  its  practical  effect  was  "You  will  and  you 
won't ;  you  shall  and  you  shan't ;  you  can  and  you  can't ;  you 
will  be  damned  if  you  do,  and  you  will  be  damned  if  you 
don't."  Happily,  now  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States 
has  shown  that  it  has  more  courage  and  more  wisdom  than 
Congress,  and  has  declared  that  the  shackles  shall  be  taken 
away  from  legitimate  and  rightful  business  by  interpreting  the 
law  according  to  the  light  of  reason,  which  means  the  common 
law,  and  so  we  get  back  to  the  foundation  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers. 

It  is  unfortunate  for  business  that  we  not  only  legislate 
after  the  horse  is  stolen,  but  we  permit  and  encourage  first 
the  stealing  of  the  horse.  Take  the  formation  of  the  steel 
trust,  for  instance,  and  I  am  neither  advocating  nor  defending 
that  corporation.  There  never  was  so  much  publicity  with 
any  business.  Its  magnitude  attracted  the  attention  and  fired 
the  imagination  not  only  of  this  country  but  of  the  world. 
The  newspapers  daily  had  columns  describing  the  processes 
of  organization,  the  plants  belonging  to  other  corporations  and' 
to  individuals  and  firms  which  were  bought  and  how  much 
was  paid  for  them  and  what  the  profits  were  to  the  seller  and 
the  purchasers.  Even  Mr.  Carnegie,  going  out  of  business  as 
he  was  by  that  merger,  suspended  his  usual  rule  of  reticence 
and  told  the  world  how  much  he  received  for  his  interests  and 
what,  at  five  per  cent,  the  income  would  be  per  year.  The 
subscriptions  to  the  syndicate  were  public  and  universally 
understood  and  largely  participated  in.  There  were  no  protests 
in  the  press;  there  was  not  a  voice  raised  in  Congress ;  the  judi- 
cial machinery  of  the  government  was  motionless,  the  calen- 
dars of  the  courts  were  clean  of  law  suits,  and  the  Sher- 
man Law  was  on  the  statute  books  the  same  as  it  is  to-day. 


47 

Now  after  this  great  business  machinery  has  got  into  working 
order  and  the  stocks  are  distributed  among  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  investors,  and  nearly  three  hundred  thousand  laborers 
are  dependent  for  the  living  of  themselves  and  their  families 
upon  its  operations,  it  is  discovered  that  it  is  under  the  con- 
demnation of  the  Sherman  Law  and  must  be  disbanded. 

A  Yankee,  with  Puritan  ancestors,  who  was  a  stockholder 
in  the  Standard  Oil  Company,  came  to  me  the  other  day  for 
advice.  He  said,  "I  hold  ten  shares  in  the  Standard  Oil  Com- 
pany. I  now  discover  that  I  was  at  that  time  a  monopolist  and 
a  bad  citizen.  The  company  has  been  purged  of  sin  by  a  reor- 
ganization under  the  direction  of  the  court.  It  has  been  divided 
into  thirty-seven  different  corporations.  The  interests  of  the 
stockholders  are  widely  different  in  each  of  these  corporations. 
I  have  received  a  notice  from  one  of  them  that  I  have  a  one 
hundred  and  seventy-four  three  hundred  and  five  one  thou- 
sandth interest  in  a  share  of  stock  in  that  corporation,  and 
upon  it  they  have  declared  a  dividend  of  two  dollars  a  share. 
Now,  I  can't  figure  out  what  ought  to  be  the  size  of  the  check 
which  they  will  send  me  or  whether  it  will  be  right  when  it 
arrives.  The  only  thing  that  I  do  know  is  that  now  I  am  an 
honest  man  and  patriotic  citizen." 

My  friends,  the  spirit  of  Pilgrim  liberty  is  that  it  recog- 
nizes the  rewards  which  come  to  ability,  industry  and  thrift 
and  has  no  fear  of  bigness,  unless  that  bigness  is  used  to 
monopolize,  to  restrain  or  to  oppress  the  little  fellow.  The 
true  way  to  meet  that  situation,  the  spirit  of  Pilgrim  liberty 
in  which  it  can  be  met  and  must  be  met  if  it  is  to  be  properly 
solved,  has  already  been  demonstrated  in  the  treatment  of  the 
railroads  by  the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  at  Wash- 
ington and  the  Public  Service  Commission  in  the  State  of 
New  York.  They  do  not  disband  the  corporations  and  create 
confusion,  they  do  not  disturb  the  business  world  by  uncer- 
tainties, but  vested  with  the  supreme  power  of  the  people, 
they  prevent  oppression,  wrongdoing  and  favoritism,  and  pro- 
mote publicity  and  enforce  a  square  deal  for  everybody.  The 
watchword  of  the  future  must  be  this  demonstrated  principle 
of  government  regulation  of  all  great  industries. 


48 

The  safety  valve  of  free  institutions  is  discussion,  pub- 
licity and  free  speech. 

I  read  recently  an  account  of  a  meeting  in  some  western 
city  of  a  convention  in  which  they  complained  by  resolution 
that  the  west  and  the  south  have  not  a  proper  place  in  Ameri- 
can history  because  the  Yankees  have  written  all  the  histories. 
Well,  why?  Because  they  could  write  histories  which  people 
would  read.  Ink  and  paper  is  just  as  cheap  and  as  plentiful 
in  every  part  of  the  country  as  in  New  England  or  New  York. 
Culture  is  not  wholly  confined  to  New  England.  They  have  a 
Browning  Society  in  Chicago.  There  used  to  be  a  weekly 
luncheon  at  Parker's  Hotel  in  Boston  and  around  the  table 
were  gathered  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes, 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Judge  Rockwell  Hoar,  Theodore  Parker, 
Hawthorne.  The  contributions  of  these  authors  have  made 
American  literature  classic  and  apparently  they  have  no  suc- 
cessors. I  cannot  help  thinking  that  environment  and  tradition 
had  much  to  do  with  their  development. 

Nothing  so  promotes  and  accelerates  the  expansion  of  a 
good  idea  as  persecution.  I  remember  a  public  meeting  in 
New  York  addressed  by  Wendell  Phillips.  On  account  of 
enormous  trade  interests  with  the  South  and  prejudice  against 
the  negro,  there  was  very  little  sentiment  anywhere  in  the 
North  for  abolition  of  slavery.  Wendell  Phillips  was  the 
greatest  orator  to  whom  I  ever  listened,  and  I  have  heard 
most  of  them.  Captain  Rynders,  a  Tammany  brave  of  that 
period,  organized  a  mob  to  break  up  that  meeting,  and  suc- 
ceeded. The  story  of  that  riot  and  the  suppression  of  Phillips' 
speech  promoted  a  discussion  of  slavery  all  over  the  country 
which  advanced  by  more  than  a  half  century  Lincoln's  Procla- 
mation of  Emancipation. 

There  is  not  much  popular  feeling  in  the  United  States 
on  behalf  of  this  movement  for  peace  and  arbitration,  so  hap- 
pily and  wisely  inaugurated  by  President  Taft.  We  are  too 
near  our  war  of  sentiment  for  Cuba,  and  too  much  absorbed 
in  our  business  affairs  and  too  distant  from  any  possibility 
of  attack  upon  ourselves  for  the  people  to  give  much  thought 
to  the  subject,  but  when  four  hundred  naturalized  citizens, 
inspired  by  European  and  not  American  politics,  broke  up  the 


49 

meeting  in  Carnegie  Hall  the  other  evening  they  gave  an 
irresistible  impulse  to  the  demand  of  the  American  people  for 
the  ratification  of  these  arbitration  treaties.  The  men  who 
broke  up  that  meeting  with  a  riot  and  suppressed  the  speeches 
of  our  most  eminent  citizens  failed  to  understand  the  true 
meaning  of  American  liberty,  free  speech  and  open  discussion. 
A  man  complained  to  his  neighbor  that  another  neighbor 
greeted  him  with  a  slap  on  the  breast  that -broke  the  cigars  in 
his  pocket,  and  he  was  prejudiced  against  that  sort  of  affection, 
but  he  said,  "I'll  fix  him  so  he  will  never  do  it  again.  I 
have  replaced  the  cigars  with  two  sticks  of  dynamite." 

The  dynamic  force  of  American  liberty  is  before  the 
world  most  conspicuously  to-day  in  the  young  American 
Shuster,  who  has  been  appointed  treasurer  of  the  dying  king- 
dom of  Persia.  The  great  powers  were  pacifying  Persia 
apparently  to  divide  her  territory  when  her  difficulties  became 
insoluble,  but  this  young  American  makes  a  contract  with 
Persia  to  manage  her  finances,  and  soon  finds  that  the  country 
is  rich  enough  with  stability  to  pay  its  debts  and  have  orderly 
government.  That  means  a  revival  of  the  Empire  of  Cyrus 
the  Great  under  the  auspices  of  a  twenty-eight-year-old  Ameri- 
can. The  Russian  bear  growls,  the  Cossacks  occupy  the 
country,  the  Czar's  ministers  say  "Shuster  must  quit  or  war," 
and  then  'Shuster,  without  army,  without  Cossacks,  simply 
says,  "I  stand  by  my  contract,  and  in  America  such  things  are 
respected."  In  the  Persian  is  revived  a  spark  of  patriotism 
which  has  lain  dormant  for  five  hundred  years  and  he  says, 
"We  stand  by  Shuster  no  matter  what  happens,"  and  the 
English  public,  who  when  fully  informed  admire  courage  and 
fair  play,  are  gradually  getting  behind  Shuster. 

The  cable  in  this  evening's  papers  is  that  the  Russian 
Army  has  forced  Persia  to  dismiss  Shuster.  It  will  do  more 
than  anything  else  to  keep  alive  national  spirit  in  Persia  and 
win  for  her  the  sympathy  of  the  world. 

Now,  my  friends,  how  much  have  we  changed?  During 
the  Revolutionary  War  the  Duke  de  Lauzun  arrived  in 
Lebanon,  Connecticut,  with  his  Hussars,  a  brilliant  company 
composed  of  young  French  noblemen.  His  Lieutenants  were 
the  Marquis  de  Chastellux  and  the  Baron  de  Montesquieu.  It 


50 

was  the  home  of  Governor  Trumbull.  They  were  there  for 
months.  The  Yankee  girls  got  up  for  them  picnics,  sleigh 
rides,  toboggan  slides,  skating  and  every  form  of  New  England 
amusement.  The  French  noblemen  enjoyed  every  minute  of 
it  intensely,  except  .that  at  the  banquets  Governor  Trumbull, 
according  to  the  Puritan  custom,  insisted  on  a  half  hour  of 
grace  before  meat.  The  curious  thing  about  it  all  is  that  though 
these  young  Frenchmen  were  the  most  attractive  men  of  their 
time  and  in  brilliant  uniform  and  made  love  as  the  Yankee 
never  could  have  done,  they  did  not  capture  a  single  American 
girl.  These  Yankee  girls  had  only  one  absorbing  idea  and 
that  was  the  success  of  the  revolution  and  the  formation  of  the 
Republic,  and  they  became  the  mothers  of  the  future  governors 
and  legislators  and  congressmen  and  judges  of  New  England 
and  of  the  country.  The  only  difference  if  conditions  were, 
reversed  to  our  time  would  be  that  the  entertainments  would 
have  a  different  style  and  be  equally  enjoyable,  but  the  girls 
would  marry  the  noblemen.  At  the  same  time  Sheldon's  cavalry 
passed  through  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  on  its  way  to  join 
General  Washington.  The  Reverend  Judah  Champion  imme- 
diately opened  the  Litchfield  Church  and  invited  the  cavalry 
in  and  offered  a  prayer  which  he  was  so  proud  of  that  he 
recorded  it  in  the  register.  It  is  too  long  to  repeat  entire,  but 
I  will  give  you  its  spirit.  At  that  time  General  Howe  was  on 
the  ocean  with  reinforcements  for  General  Clinton  in  New 
York.  The  minister  petitioned: 

Oh!  Lord,  we  view  with  terror  and  dismay  the  enemies 
of  Thy  holy  religion.  Wilt  Thou  send  storm  and  tempest 
to  toss  them  upon  the  sea  and  to  overwhelm  them  in  the 
mighty  deep  and  scatter  them  to  the  uttermost  parts  of  the 
earth !  But,  peradventure,  should  any  escape  Thy  vengeance, 
collect  them  again  together,  Oh !  Lord,  as  in  the  bottom  of  Thy 
hand,  and  let  Thy  lightnings  play  upon  them.  We  beseech 
Thee,  moreover,  that  Thou  do  gird  up  the  loins  of  these,  Thy 
servants,  who  are  going  forth  to  fight  Thy  battles.  Make 
them  strong  men,  that  one  shall  chase  a  thousand,  two  shall 
put  ten  thousand  to  flight! 

If  conditions  should  be  the  same  in  our  time  would  our 
clergy  repeat  that  prayer?  I  think  not.  Instead  they  might 


have  the  same  feeling,  but  they  would  pray  for  speedy  and 
honorable  peace  and  a  recognition  of  the  efforts  of  the  Red 
Cross  Society. 

Gentlemen,  to-night  the  old  and  the  new,  the  founders 
and  the  descendants,  commune  together.  We  differ  only  from 
our  ancestors  in  the  changed  conditions  of  the  times,  but. 
happily  for  the  country,  for  its  present  and  its  future,  the  ideas 
of  the  Pilgrims  are  still  a  constructive  force  in  American 
progress.  The  schoolhouse  and  the  church  are  not  yet 
divorced,  but  they  go  together  wherever  American  citizens 
settle  and  organize  communities.  We  welcome  the  stranger 
fleeing  from  oppression  as  our  fathers  did,  but  now  with  the 
government  land  exhausted  and  our  population  increasing  we 
ask  that  the  barriers  be  raised  higher  and  higher  that  there 
may  be  no  contamination  of  American  citizenship. 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Annual  Dinner  of  the  Society  of  the 
Genesee,  at  the  Hotel  Knickerbocker,  New 
York  City,  on  Saturday  Evening,  January 
20,  1912. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  This  meeting  with  the 
Society  of  the  Genesee  is  charming  both  in  its  relations  to  the 
present  and  the  past.  In  my  own  varied  experience  I  have 
•found  that  more  pleasure  can  be  had  out  of  a  political  stump- 
ing tour  than  from  any  other  exercises.  For  years  it  was  my 
habit  to  take  my  vacation  in  this  way,  and  start  out  to  inter- 
view and  inform  my  fellow  citizens  of  my  views  of  the  policies 
necessary  for  the  safety  of  the  country  from  the  early  autumn 
until  the  frost  was  on  the  pumpkin.  Sometimes  indeed  I  have 
spoken  in  the  early  morning  to  a  crowd  gathered  about  the 
platform  of  the  car  in  the  biting  air  of  Northern  New  York, 
with  the  snow  beating  upon  us  all.  It  was  not  cold  enough, 
however,  to  equal  the  experience  of  one  of  Charles  Lever's 
stories  who,  in  making  a  speech  to  his  shipmates  and  to  the 
Esquimaux,  found  that  his  words  froze  and  fell  upon  the 
ground  as  they  were  uttered  until  he  stood  up  to  his  chin  in 
a  bank  of  his  own  eloquence. 

But  the  great  value  of  this  contact  with  the  people  is  the 
knowledge  it  gives  one  of  the  varying  conditions  in  his  State 
of  the  different  ideas  of  hospitality  and  conditions  in  the 
commonwealth.  It  is  the  best  school  in  the  world  to  study 
human  nature.  I  have  been  a  guest  on  these  trips  in  the  pala- 
tial home  of  the  banker  and  the  manufacturer,  in  the  farm 
house  of  the  farmer  and  the  cottage  of  the  artisan,  the  hos- 
pitality of  each  making  the  welcome  just  as  agreeable  and  the 
hospitality  just  as  enjoyable  in  one  place  as  the  other.  It  is 
these  trips,  continued  at  intervals  for  half  a  century,  which 
have  made  me  believe  that  the  most  delightful  section  through 
which  to  travel  is  the  Genesee  Valley.  There  is  a  finish  about 
its  farms ;  there  is  a  comfort  about  its  homes ;  there  is  a  gen- 
eral air  of  contentment  and  prosperity  which  is  full  of  inspira- 
tion. There  is  a  genuineness  in  its  hospitality  which  leaves 


54 

the  stump  speaker  with  delightful  recollections  of  people  who 
have  entertained  him  which  he  rejoices  to  recall  and  can  never 
forget. 

But,  then,  every  section  of  the  State  has  its  peculiarities 
and  subjects  in  which  it  is  most  interested.  Along  the  north- 
ern counties,  it  is  politics;  by  the  Hudson,  it  is  scenery 
and  land  speculation ;  through  the  Mohawk  Valley,  it  is  manu- 
factures ;  along  the  southern  tier,  it  is  politics  again,  but  in  the 
Genesee  Valley  when  the  public  exercises  are  over  and  the 
intimate  conversation  occurs  between  the  close  of  the  meeting 
and  retiring  to  bed  it  is  generally  the  old  families  of  the  neigh- 
borhood. I  became  familiar  with  the  characteristics,  peculiari- 
ties, distinguishing  traits  and  achievements  of  all  the  pioneer 
families  of  the  Genesee  Valley,  and  the  narrator  always  claimed 
to  be  one  of  them.  The  idea  of  old  families  which  has  furnished 
so  much  material  for  the  reformer  and  the  jester  is  that  the 
best  of  them  is  below  ground.  This,  however,  applies  in  no 
respect  to  the  old  families  of  Western  New  York.  A  royal 
personage  once  said  to  me,  "I  am  told  in  regard  to  your  coun- 
trymen and  countrywomen  that  I  may  recognize  these  because 
of  their  family  and  others  must  be  barred  because  they  have 
no  family.  Families  with  us  date  away  back  to  early  historical 
times  from  achievements  in  arms,  from  domains  won  by  valor, 
from  leaders  of  the  crusades  and  from  an  unbroken  ancestry 
of  nobility  running  back  hundreds  of  years  before  the  discov- 
ery of  America,  while  for  the  life  of  me  I  cannot  make  any 
distinction  among  you  Americans,  except  to  the  extent  to 
which  you  are  companionable  and  agreeable.  On  that  basis 
1  love  to  meet  and  to  entertain  your  countrymen  and  country- 
women and  enjoy  their  talent,  their  wit,  their  humor,  their 
conversational  power,  the  agreeableness  of  your  men  and  the 
charm  of  your  women."  But  there  is  an  old  family  distinction 
with  us  of  which  we  may  be  proud.  It  is  of  the  pioneers  who 
settled  among  the  Indian  confederacy  of  the  Six  Nations  and 
carved  out  of  the  wilderness  the  estates  which  by  their  energy 
and  ability  they  turned  into  productive  farms  which  added  to 
the  wealth  and  prosperity  of  the  commonwealth.  With  them 
the  rule  of  three  generations  from  shirt-sleeve  to  shirt-sleeve 
did  not  prevail.  They  reared  large  families  of  energetic  sons 


55 

and  of  spirited  and  fascinating  daughters.  While  some  re- 
mained upon  the  farms,  others  built  up  the  cities  and  the  vil- 
lages, developed  the  water  powers  and  created  manufactories 
or  went  into  the  professions  and  became  ministers,  doctors, 
lawyers,  judges,  journalists,  legislators  and  members  of  Con- 
gresses and  the  Cabinets  of  Presidents. 

I  remember  being  entertained  by  the  local  banker  in  one 
of-  these  charming  places  along  the  Genesee  nearly  fifty  years 
ago.  His  conversation  was  of  these  pioneer  families.  He  said, 
"One  of  the  leaders  recently  died  and  it  is  a  great  loss  to  our 
community."  He  was  original  in  every  way  and  his  originality 
was  one  of  the  sources  of  his  great  success.  I  went  in  to  see  a 
widow  of  another  one  of  these  pioneers,  and  she  commenced 
lamenting  the  loss  of  her  friend.  She  said,  "You  do  not  know 
how  I  mi'ss  him  now  that  nearly  every  one  of  the  people  with 
whom  I  was  intimate  are  dead  and  gone.  He  used  to  come 
in  here  nearly  every  evening  and  place  his  chair  in  front  of  the 
fireplace  and  put  his  feet  on  the  mantelpiece  and  light  his  pipe 
and  talk  and  sleep  and  snore  and  be  so  sociable." 

But  what  would  the  Genesee  Valley  be  without  its  capital 
at  Rochester,  in  many  respects  the  most  beautiful  city  in  the 
world?  The  sons  and  daughters  of  these  pioneers,  who  had 
been  brought  up  with  plenty  of  fresh  air  upon  the  farm  when 
they  established  their  homes  at  Rochester,  made  that  city 
unique  in  so  laying  out  their  lots  and  building  their  houses  that 
there  was  land  and  a  garden  about  each  residence.  "The  city 
in  the  country,  and  the  country  in  the  city"  is  the  evidence  of 
the  genius  of  the  founders  of  Rochester.  I  always  loved  in 
these  campaign  excursions  to  wind  up  in  your  city.  There 
was  something  about  the  dinner  beforehand,  with  the  leading 
men  of  all  parties,  in  the  responsiveness  of  the  audience  and 
in  the  reception  and  the  supper  afterward  which  made  the 
entertainment  the  crowning  event  of  the  campaign. 

The  natural  pride  of  the  Rochester  citizens  is  always 
delightful.  I  remember  as  we  stood  on  the  bank  of  the  gorge 
where  the  Genesee  flows,  when  it  flows,  that  the  local  enthusi- 
ast said,  "Here  is  a  gorge  finer  than  Niagara.  Here  is  a 
waterfall  of  greater  height  than  Niagara.  It  would  in  all 
respects  be  superior  to  Niagara  if  it  had.  water,"  This  re- 


56 

minded  me  of  a  story  which  was  told  me  by  that  most  delight- 
ful of  wits  and  raconteurs,  the  late  Mr.  William  M.  Evarts. 
He  said  that  stopping  at  Cape  Cod  one  summer  the  guests  were 
always  complaining  of  the  fishy  flavor  of  the  ducks,  and  .the 
indignant  landlord  finally  said,  "Ladies  and  gentlemen,  the 
Cape  Cod  duck  is  a  finer  duck  than  the  canvasback;  its 
plumage  is  handsomer;  it  weighs  more;  it  can  fly  higher;  it 
can  dive  deeper,  and  it  would  taste  just  as  good  if  it  would 
eat  the  wild  celery,  but,  damn  him,  he  won't  eat  it." 

It  is  the  habit  of  the  young  graduate  to  take  Rome  for 
his  comparisons  in  all  civic  addresses.  So,  what  is  the  differ- 
ence between  Rome,  New  York,  and  Rochester?  It  took 
ancient  Rome  five  hundred  years  to  annex  Attica,  to  con- 
quer Palmyra  and  lead  her  Queen  Zenobia  at  the  chariot 
wheels  of  the  Emperor,  to  have  its  legions  tramp  over  the 
plains  of  Ilion  and  to  make  contributary  to  its  greatness 
Syracuse  and  Utica.  Ancient  Rome  made  these  conquests 
by  the  sacrifice  of  millions  of  lives  and  slaughter  and  de- 
vastation which  make  the  most  ghastly  volumes  of  history, 
but  Rochester  has,  within  fifty  years  almost,  by  methods  of 
peace  and  regeneration,  drawn  to  her  marts  of  trade  and  her 
centers  of  commerce  the  production  and  the  citizens  of  Attica 
and  Palmyra  and  Ilion,  and  even  drawn  from  the  commercial 
walls  which  surround  Syracuse  and  Utica  a  part  of  their 
commerce  and  their  trade  and  annexed  to  her  triumphal  car 
even  Rome  itself.  Happily  the  engineer  who  surveyed  the 
wilderness  of  western  New  York  was  a  classical  scholar.  He 
saw  in  imagination  the  glories  of  the  ancient  world  reproduced 
in  America.  So  he  dotted  his  map  with  these  classic  names 
for  future  cities,  and  they  are  all  within  a  hundred  miles  of 
Rochester. 

Rochester  has  a  distinct  connection  with  my  relations  to 
one  of  the  episodes  and  tragedies  of  American  public  life.  I 
allude  to  the  candidacy  and  the  tragic  death  of  Horace 
Greeley.  I  had  retired  from  politics  in  1872  with  the  deter- 
mination to  make  up  in  my  profession  what  I  had  lost  in  office 
when  Mr.  Greeley,  who  was  my  neighbor  in  the  country,  came 
one  night  to  my  house.  He  said,  "Chauncey,  I  have  been  nom- 
inated for  President  by  the  Liberal  Republicans.  I  cannot  win 


57 

except  I  get  the  indorsement  of  the  Democrats.  I  am  told 
that  if  I  can  demonstrate,  which  I  believe  to  be  true,  that  the 
majority  of  the  Republican  party  is  with  me,  that  then  I  will 
receive  the  Democratic  indorsement  and  will  be  elected  Presi- 
dent by  the  largest  vote  ever  cast  since  Washington.  In  order 
to  demonstrate  my  Republican  following,  my  friends  have 
organized  a  mass  meeting  at  Rochester  which  they  say  will  be 
entirely  Republican,  and  will  include  all  the  leaders  of  that 
overwhelmingly  Republican  section  of  our  State,  Western  New 
York.  Now,  it  is  necessary  to  have  a  speaker  of  State  and 
National  reputation,  and  they  have  selected  you."  "Well,"  I 
said,  "Mr.  Greeley,  I  have  retired  from  politics ;  besides,  it  goes 
tremendously  against  me  to  break  with  my  party,  and  I  never 
have  done  it."  He  said,  "Chauncey,  I  have  supported  you 
every  time  you  were  elected  to  the  Legislature  and  while  there 
and  while  Secretary  of  State  and  in  all  your  ambitions  with 
all  my  strength  in  the  Tribune,  and  I  did  not  think  I  would 
be  treated  in  this  way."  That  was  too  much  for  me.  I  said, 
"Very  well,  Mr.  Greeley,  I  will  go."  The  meeting  was  held 
in  that  auditorium  with  the  bes:  acoustics  in  the  country, 
Corinthian  Hall.  The  crowds  jammed  the  streets  for  blocks. 
The  meeting  was  presided  over  by  Judge  Henry  R.  Selden  of 
the  Court  of  Appeals,  one  of  the  best  loved  Republicans  in 
our  commonwealth.  There  were  a  hundred  Vice-Presidents 
and  a  hundred  Secretaries  whom  I  had  met  in  every  campaign 
since  '56  as  the  Republican  leaders  in  all  the  counties  in  West- 
ern New  York.  The  meeting  was  such  a  phenomenal  success 
that  Mr.  Greeley 's  friends  secured  without  trouble  the  Demo- 
cratic indorsement  for  his  nomination  as  a  Liberal  Republican. 
In  October,  North  Carolina  went  Republican.  In  November, 
all  of  these  men  went  back  to  their  allegiance  to  the  Republican 
candidate.  General  Grant  was  elected  by  the  largest  majority 
known  up  to  that  period.  That  was  the  first  progressive  move- 
ment in  the  great  parties  of  our  country  since  the  organization 
of  the  government.  History  so  frequently  repeats  itself  that 
what  happened  once  is  most  likely  to  occur  again.  I  com- 
mend this  instance  to  the  cheerful  consideration  of  our  guest 
of  honor  here  to-night,  President  Taft. 

When  I  recall  your  attractive  city,  the  exquisite  beauty  of 


58 

your  valley,  and  particularly  the  homelikeness  of  your  villages 
and  farms,  I  wonder  how  so  many  of  you  escaped  and  came 
to  New  York.  Is  it  the  fascination  of  Wall  Street,  or  the 
attractions  of  the  Great  White  Way?  I  know  from  my  own 
experience  as  a  country  boy  that  there  is  no  escape  once  within 
the  sphere  of  their  influence,  of  the  lure  of  the  crowd  and 
the  lights  of  the  Metropolis.  But  I  think  that  you  rather  have 
come  here  upon  philanthropic  missions  in  order  that  the  lambs 
of  our  city  may  be  fed  upon  the  invigorating  fodder — the 
stocks  and  bonds — of  your  trolley,  your  water  power  and  your 
electric  light  companies. 

We  are  here  of  all  politics,  and  of  no  politics,  but  as  a 
retired  statesman  calmly  surveying  the  field  and  holding  the 
scales  in  equipoise  for  the  present,  I  must  say  that  it  seems 
to  me  inexcusable  cruelty  that  the  peace-loving,  distinguished 
and  erudite  college  professor  Woodrow  Wilson  should  be 
assailed  at  the  same  time  on  either  side  by  two  of  the  most 
militant  colonels  in  the  country,  Colonel  Roosevelt  and  Colonel 
Bryan. 

We  are  business  men  here  to-night,  away  from  its  cares 
and  responsibilities  to  dwell  a  while  in  imagination  in  our 
rural  homes.  As  business  men,  without  regards  to  politics, 
present  or  future,  with  the  President  of  the  United  States  here 
as  the  guest  of  honor,  we  can  thank  him  for  many  things 
which  he  has  done  in  the  best  interests  of  the  country.  Upon 
the  tariff  rests  all  our  industries.  Any  disturbance  of  it  is 
sure  to  lead  to  uncertainty  and  uncertainty  ends  in  panics, 
and  yet  in  the  changing  conditions  of  our  industrial  life, 
changes  of  the  tariff  are  inevitable  and  must  come.  I  have 
gone  through  one  struggle  in  the  Senate  in  tariff  framing 
or  tariff  measure,  and  know  that  it  is  not  a  scientific  re- 
vision of  schedules  but  a  game  of  chance  and  governed 
largely  by  the  ability  and  the  power  of  the  various  interests 
of  the  country.  We  can  thank  the  President  that  in  spite  of 
the  opposition  of  high  protectionists  and  of  free  traders  he 
has  secured  a  Tariff  Board  of  experts;  that  he  has  appointed 
such  a  board  without  regard  to  political  associations  or  affilia- 
tions, and  that  now  in  the  revision  of  the  tariff  we  can  have  the 
recommendations  of  this  expert  commission  upon  different 


59 

schedules  as  the  question  arises  instead  of  a  general  disturb- 
ance of  the  whole  business  of  the  country  upon  every  item  of 
manufacture  and  production.  As  business  men  we  are  inter- 
ested in  finance  and  currency.  We  know  that  millions  are 
locked  up  in  secret  places  in  the  homes  of  the  people  because 
they  fear  the  banks,  and  there  that  currency  becomes  the  prey 
of  robbers  and  of  fires.  We  know  also  that  foreigners  work- 
ing here  and  not  understanding  our  institutions  transmit  many 
more  millions  of  currency  a  year  to  their  homes.  We  can 
thank  President  Taft  that  by  unremitting  effort  and  against 
the  objections  of  localities  that  want  every  dollar  kept  where 
it  was  produced  he  has  secured  the  Postal  Savings  Banks, 
which  will  not  only  aid  the  people,  but  keep  at  the  service  of 
the  government  millions,  mounting  higher  every  year,  which 
before  were  never  available. 

We  have  had  upon  the  statute  book  for  twenty  years  the 
Sherman  Anti-Trust  Law.  It  has  received  various  interpreta- 
tions. The  lawyers  could  not  agree  upon  it  and  business  men 
were  in  doubt  as  to  whether  they  were  violating  the  law  or 
living  up  to  its  requirements.  With  the  ability  of  a  great 
lawyer,  with  the  calmness  of  a  great  judge,  with  the  courage 
of  a  great  executive,  the  President  has  forced  through  the 
courts  to  an  ultimate  decision  from  our  highest  tribunal  an 
interpretation  of  the  Sherman  Anti-Trust  law,  which  is  prac- 
ticable and  sensible.  Now  business  knows  what  it  can  do  and 
what  it  cannot  do,  and  business  does  not  care  so. much  what 
it  is  prevented  from  doing  or  what  it  is  permitted  to  do  so 
long  as  it  knows  the  law.  We  of  all  parties  can  thank  the 
President,  also  that  in  no  respect  has  he  shown  so  much  that 
lie  is  the  President  of  the  whole  people  as  in  the  selections 
which  he  has  made  for  that  highest  tribunal  upon  which 
depends  more  than  in  any  other  department  of  our  government 
the  strength  and  stability  of  our  institutions  and  the  prosperity 
of  the  country.  I  mean  the  Supreme  Court.  He  has  had 
the  courage,  because  he  was  best  fitted  for  the  place,  to  make 
a  Democrat  and  a  Confederate  soldier  Chief  Justice.  He 
has  had  the  courage  and  open-mindedness  to  place  both  Demo- 
crats and  Republicans  upon  that  bench,  governed  only  by  their 
qualifications  and  their  ability  to  fill  this  great  place. 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Celebration  of  the  Treaty  of  Peace 
between  France  and  the  United  States,  made 
February  6,  1778,  being  the  First  Treaty 
Ever  Made  by  the  United  States,  on  Tues- 
day, February  6,  1912,  at  Cafe  Martin,  New 
York  City. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  It  is  characteristic  of 
the  dramatic  gift  peculiarly  possessed  by  the  French  that  you 
should  gather  here  to-night  to  bridge  the  interval  of  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-four  years  between  1778  and  1912.  The  in- 
terval comprises  the  best  history  of  the  world.  It  has  con- 
tributed more  to  civil  and  religious  liberty,  to  the  elevation  of 
peoples,  to  popular  sovereignty,  to  advancement  in  the  arts  and 
sciences  by  invention  and  discovery,  than  all  the  preceding  ages 
of  recorded  time. 

For  our  purpose  to-night,  and  I  think  legitimately  for  con- 
clusions anywhere,  the  inception  of  this  marvelous  age  can  be 
traced  to  1778.  We  touch  the  button,  and  the  cinematograph 
begins  to  develop  the  figures  of  the  immortals.  There  pass  in 
review  Washington  and  Lafayette,  Rochambeau  and  General 
Greene,  de  Grasse  and  John  Paul  Jones,  while  standing  beyond 
are  the  French  Foreign  Minister  de  Vergennes  and  Benjamin 
Franklin  preparing  the  treaty  which  made  possible  the  inde- 
pendence of  the  American  Colonies  and  the  creation  of  the 
Republic  of  the  United  States.  We  turn  from  the  films  of  the 
cinematograph  to  the  pages  of  history.  All  Europe  at  that 
time  was  governed  by  the  principle  of  absolutism  in  the  throne. 
While  in  the  American  Colonies  the  struggle  for  two  years 
had  been  characterized  by  a  succession  of  defeats  for  the 
patriots,  the  loss  of  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  with  New  York  and 
Philadelphia ;  the  flight  of  the  Continental  Congress  to  sit  first 
in  one  village  and  then  another ;  the  credit  of  the  young  nation 
hopelessly  impaired,  its  currency  worthless,  its  treasury  empty, 
its  munitions  of  war  almost  exhausted  and  the  army  under 


62 

Washington  encamped  at  Valley  Forge,  the  blood-stained 
tracks  of  the  feet  of  the  shoeless  soldiers  upon  the  snow  illus- 
trating the  desperate  state  of  affairs.  While  the  victory  at 
Saratoga  the  year  before  had  helped  us  with  many  continental 
nations  and  had  greatly  encouraged  our  people,  yet  without 
assistance  from  abroad  the  revolution  was  practically  ended. 
The  story  of  nations  as  well  as  of  individuals  demonstrates  that 
God  in  his  infinite  wisdom  tries  men  by  fire  before  trusting 
them  with  power.  The  trial  had  demonstrated  the  stuff  of 
which  our  forefathers  were  made  and  showed  that  capacity  for 
sacrifice  without  which  there  can  be  neither  manhood  nor 
patriotism.  Said  Lord  North  to  Benjamin  Franklin,  our  com- 
missioner at  that  time  in  London,  "How  can  so  wise  a  man  as 
you  advise  your  countrymen  to  engage  in  this  hopeless  revolu- 
tion when  we  have  the  power  to  burn  down  all  your  towns  and 
destroy  your  industries?"  Franklin  answered,  "My  Lord,  all 
I  possess  in  the  world  is  in  houses  in  those  towns.  You  can 
set  fire  to  them  and  burn  them  to  the  ground  to-morrow,  and 
you  will  only  strengthen  my  determination  to  advise  my  coun- 
trymen to  fight  if  you  continue  in  your  present  policy."  That 
was  the  spirit  which  reached  France  and  brought  about  the 
famous  treaty  of  February,  1778.  The  effect  of  that  treaty 
was  extraordinary.  The  English  Cabinet  heard  of  it  and  im- 
mediately sent  proposals  of  the  most  liberal  kind  to  Governor 
Tryon  of  New  York  to  be  presented  to  the  Continental  Con- 
gress. The  Governor  sent  them  to  General  Washington  with  a 
request  that  they  be  presented  to  Congress  and  also  placed  in 
the  hands  of  every  soldier  in  the  army.  That  was  so  trans- 
parent an  effort  to  sap  the  patriotism  of  the  Continental  troops 
by  the  prospect  of  peace  that  Washington,  confident  on  his  side, 
wrote  back  to  the  Governor,  "Every  soldier  has  a  copy  of 
your  proposition  and  Congress  is  considering  it."  Congress 
said  to  Washington,  "What  do  you  advise?"  Washington's 
answer  was  characteristic:  "No  negotiations  and  no  com- 
munications until  the  army  and  the  fleet  are  withdrawn  and 
our  independence  recognized."  The  treaty  with  France  arrived 
and  was  immediately  ratified  by  the  Continental  Congress. 
The  French  under  Count  de  Grasse  appeared  in  our  waters 
and  the  French  army,  under  Rochambeau,  was  soon  afoot 


63 

on  our  land.  Munitions  of  war  were  furnished  and  a  credit 
supplied  by  France  which  brought  the  revolution  to  a  success- 
ful close  two  years  afterward. 

Just  now  there  is  a  wide  spirit  of  agitation,  fomented  by 
flaming  oratory,  against  leaders  and  organization.  We  are 
told  that  progress  has  been  impeded,  delayed  and  at  times  para- 
lyzed by  reliance  at  different  periods  upon  so-called  great  men. 
There  is  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  It  is  only  another  pic- 
ture, suited  to  another  period,  by  a  twist  of  the  kaleidoscope 
with  the  same  old  glass  inside.  We  had  in  this  very  year,  1778, 
an  experiment.  It  is  known  in  history  as  the  "Conway  Cabal." 
It  had  its  origin  in  hatred  of  the  demonstrated  superiority  in 
every  element  of  leadership  of  General  Washington.  It  pro- 
posed to  subject  him  to  the  referendum  and  recall.  Its  pur- 
pose was  to  put  in  his  place  General  Gates  and  a  staff  com- 
posed of  the  malcontents.  Gates,  as  was  proven  when  subjected 
to  trial,  was  a  monumental  egotist  of  showy  but  not  substantial 
ability.  The  battle  of  Saratoga,  which  gave  him  his  fame,  had 
been  won  by  the  careful  preparations  of  General  Schuyler 
(who  was  removed  by  the  machinations  of  Gates)  and  by  the 
desperate  bravery  of  Benedict  Arnold.  If  the  conspiracy  had 
succeeded,  and  the  referendum  and  the  recall  had  removed 
Washington  and  put  Gates  and  Conway  and  Lee  in  supreme 
charge,  we  would  not  be  here  to-night.  But,  happily,  it  failed, 
and  the  whole  world  now  recognizes  that  there  was  one  su- 
preme leader  who  could  have  carried  us  safely  through  the 
revolution,  and  that  was  George  Washington. 

Our  country  has  reached  its  present  position  of  peace, 
power  and  happiness  because  trained  statesmen  have  been 
deemed  by  our  people  to  be  better  fitted  to  enact  our  laws 
with  the  deliberation,  the  study  and  experience  which  are 
the  characteristics  of  representative  government,  than  to  have 
them  made  by  the  passion  of  the  hour  and  the  voice  of  the 
agitator  willing  to  fire  the  Temple  of  Ephesus  if  it  may  lead 
to  power  and  fame  for  himself. 

But  how  came  France,  absolutely  ruled  by  aristocratic 
power,  to  give  assistance  at  this  critical  hour  to  a  revolt  against 
kingly  authority?  Again  comes  to  the  mind  the  man  of  born 
leadership.  This  time  it  is  the  man  of  ideas.  No  man  con- 


64 

tributed  so  much  to  the  creation  of  government  as  it  is  to-day 
as  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  a  genius  with  marvelous  gifts. 
His  teachings  proved  that  no  matter  how  wonderful  the  power 
or  attractive  the  presentation  of  false  ideas — 

"Truth  crushed  to  earth  shall  rise  again ; 
The  eternal  years  of  God  are  hers ; 
While  error,  wounded,  writhes  with  pain, 
And  dies  among  its  worshipers." 

Rousseau  caught  on  to  the  questioning  spirit  of  the  age 
and  presented  atheism  in  more  fascinating  garb  than  ever 
before,  but  the  resistless  force  of  the  truths  of  Christianity 
crushed  his  crusade.  He  brought  all  his  powers  to  the  propa- 
gation of  the  doctrine  of  free  love  and  the  lack  of  obligation 
in  the  marriage  tie,  but  the  eternal  foundations  of  the  family 
remained  unchanged.  He  proclaimed  the  truth,  then  unknown 
and  unrecognized,  that  government  can  exist  only  by  consent 
of  the  governed.  This  was  the  dynamite  which  had  lain  dor- 
mant for  ages.  It  led  to  the  French  Revolution,  until  it  worked 
its  way  to  the  creation  of  republican  France  of  to-day.  The 
court  of  Louis,  tired  of  frivolity  and  wearied  of  gayety,  turned 
to  this  idea  of  Rousseau  as  a  toy  to  give  freshness  to  fagged 
intellects  and  interest  to  vapid  conversation,  but  in  many  minds 
it  found  lodgment,  even  at  the  court,  and  sent  Lafayette  to  the 
United  States.  But  there  was  another  figure  whose  presence, 
whose  equipment,  whose  marvelous  sense,  helped  beyond  de- 
scription Rousseau's  idea  at  the  court,  and  that  was  Benjamin 
Franklin.  Printer,  writer,  statesman,  Quaker,  he  is  the  most 
picturesque  character  of  this  period  of  revolution.  The  prin- 
ciple of  non-resistance  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  the 
faith  of  the  Quaker  is  often  the  most  dangerous  weapon  of 
offense  and  defense.  When  Franklin,  representing  the  colo- 
nies in  London,  was  summoned  before  the  Privy  Council,  Lord 
Widdeburne  assailed  him  with  abuse,  ribaldry,  and  insult, 
which  was  received  by  the  peers  in  the  Privy  Council  with 
loud  shouts  of  laughter  and  approval.  Franklin,  who  had 
been  doing  wonderful  service  in  the  effort  to  reconcile  the 
difference  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies,  and 


65 

had  met  every  rebuff  with  explanation  of  the  conditions  exist- 
ing in  America,  which  turned  out  afterward  to  be  true,  felt  that 
he  had  this  time  been  pressed  beyond  endurance.  Instead  of 
fighting  or  giving  insult  for  insult  he  simply  remarked  that  he 
had  just  bought  a  court  suit,  but  he  had  never  put  it  on  and  he 
would  never  wear  it  until  he  felt  assured  of  the  absolute  inde- 
pendence of  the  colonies.  He  went  home  and  did  more  than 
any  other  man  to  bring  the  colonies  together  to  act  in  unison 
for  the  creation  of  an  independent  government.  He  laid  the 
suit  away  in  camphor,  but  ten  years  afterward,  when  he  had 
won  the  support  of  France,  he  wore  it  at  the  French  court  in 
celebration  of  the  treaty  of  alliance,  offensive  and  defensive, 
which  had  just  been  signed  and  which  assured  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  colonies. 

Franklin  was  welcomed  by  the  philosophers,  then  popular 
at  court,  because  he  was  the  discoverer  of  electricity  and  had 
brought  lightning  from  the  clouds.  He  was  welcomed  by  the 
ladies  of  the  court  because,  though  seventy  years  of  age,  he 
was  himself  a  dynamo  of  resistless  attraction.  The  young 
wits  made  fun  of  him ;  the  young  litterateurs  caricatured  him ; 
the  fops  made  him  the  butt  of  their  sallies  at  the  suppers  and 
over  the  wine,  but  found  to  their  amazement  that  this  man  of 
three  score  and  ten  in  the  tournament  of  love  had  unhorsed 
them  all,  and  all  the  women  were  anxious  to  receive  from  him 
the  crown  of  love  and  beauty.  Franklin,  the  printer's  appren- 
tice, found  his  reward  and  fame  in  his  own  time  and,  illus- 
trating the  dynamic  power  and  resistless  force  of  the  idea 
which  we  are  considering,  Bunyan,  the  tinker,  after  more  than 
a  century,  goes  from  Bedford  Jail  to  Westminster  Abbey. 

Now,  I  said  there  was  nothing  new  under  the  sun.  The 
Continental  Congress  were  so  elated  by  the  treaty  and  the 
arrival  of  the  French  forces  by  land  and  sea  that  they  turned 
aside  from  the  war  measures  which  had  been  their  sole  occu- 
pation to  send  this  message  to  the  Legislatures  of  the  several 
States,  on  October  12,  1778,  advising  them  to  take  measures 
for  the  suppression  of  theatrical  entertainments,  horse  racing, 
gaming  and  such  other  diversion  as  were  producing  dissipa- 
tion and  general  depravity  of  principles  and  morals.  It  is 
needless  to  say  none  of  the  Legislatures  acted  upon  this 


66 


advice.  General  Washington,  after  he  retired  from  the  Presi- 
dency, left  Mount  Vernon  to  attend  a  horse  race  at  Phila- 
delphia at  which  he  had  entered  one  of  his  blooded  steeds. 
Theatrical  entertainments  are  now  more  popular  than  ever,  but 
gambling  has  been  placed  under  the  ban  of  the  law,  and,  in 
our  State,  horse  racing  was  abolished  two  years  ago. 

Another  illustration :  The  movement  for  the  emancipa- 
tion of  women,  beginning  in  laws  affecting  their  separate  prop- 
erty in  1848,  has  continued  until  now,  there  is  a  wide  and 
almost  successful  effort  to  grant  them  equal  rights  with  men 
in  the  suffrage,  in  office  holding,  in  jury  duty,  and,  in  Ger- 
many this  year  in  militarism,  and  in  every  duty  of  the  citizen. 
It  was  in  this  pregnant  twelve  months  which  constitute  1778 
that  at  the  Battle  of  Monmouth  Molly  Pitcher  was  carrying 
water  to  her  husband,  who  was  a  gunner  of  a  battery  of  one 
piece  of  artillery.  He  was  killed  and  the  lieutenant  proposed 
to  remove  the  piece  out  of  danger,  when  Molly  said,  "I  can  do 
everything  that  my  husband  could,"  and  she  performed  her 
husband's  duties  with  that  old  gun  better  than  he  could  have 
done.  The  next  morning  she  was  taken  before  General  Wash- 
ington, her  wonderful  act  was  reported  and  its  influence  upon 
the  fate  of  the  battle,  which  was  a  victory,  and  Washington 
made  her  at  once  a  sergeant  in  the  army  to  stand  on  the  rolls 
in  that  rank  as  long  as  she  lived. 

Eloquence  has  been  exhausted  and  poetry  has  received  its 
finest  inspiration  in  portraying  the  heroism  of  La  Tour 
D'Auvergne,  the  first  grenadier  of  France,  who  fell  on  his 
one  hundredth  battlefield,  having  won  as  a  private  soldier 
the  title  of  the  bravest  of  the  brave.  He  won  more — a  decree 
that  forever  at  the  roll  call  his  name  should  be  called  and  a 
sergeant  should  step  forward  and  say,  "Dead  upon  the  field 
of  honor." 

It  seems  appropriate  now  for  us  to  place  among  the  im- 
mortals and  in  the  Hall  of  Fame  this  only  woman  sergeant  of 
the  United  States  Army  who  won  her  title  fighting  for  her 
country  upon  the  field  of  battle  and  who  is  the  evangel  of 
woman's  rights  and  woman's  enfranchisement. 

Our  celebration  of  this  treaty  here  to-night,  with  the  pres- 
ence of  the  distinguished  Ambassador  of  France,  has  its  charm 


67 

and  significance.  But  the  first  celebration  of  the  treaty  was 
more  dramatic  and  more  significant.  Every  American  school- 
boy knows  the  story  of  the  horrors  of  that  winter  of  famine 
and  of  cold  at  Valley  Forge.  The  spring  and  summer  make 
of  that  beautiful  valley  a  Paradise  on  earth.  The  treaty  was 
ratified  on  the  second  of  May  by  the  Congress,  and  on  the  sixth 
it  was  celebrated  at  Valley  Forge  by  the  Continental  Army 
with  a  grand  banquet,  the  army  having  come  out  of  the  winter 
of  despair  into  the  bright  sunshine  not  only  of  hope,  but  of 
certainty  through  the  friendship  of  France.  The  feasts  in 
those  days  began  at  twelve  or  three  o'clock,  and  that  for  a 
century  afterward  was  the  dinner  hour  in  the  United  States 
in  the  best  circles.  There  were  toasts  and  speeches.  They 
could  afford  to  waste  ammunition  in  salute,  because  plenty  was 
coming  from  France.  At  five  o'clock  Washington  retired  with 
his  staff.  The  cheers  followed  him  for  a  quarter  of  a  mile  and 
were  frequently  returned  by  the  Commander-in-Chief  and  the 
officers  wheeling  about  and  responding  with  cheers.  'The 
words  shouted  by  the  army  and  the  toasts  of  that  day  have, 
happily,  been  preserved.  The  first  toast  responded  to  with  the 
wildest  enthusiasm  was  "Long  live  the  King  of  France," 
"Long  live  friendly  European  powers,"  "Huzza!  for  the 
American  States,"  and  then,  the  whole  army  rising,  "Long 
live  General  Washington !" 

There  is  a  growing  feeling  in  our  country  against  the  con- 
tinuance of  ambassadors  and  ministers  abroad.  It  is  alleged 
that  with  the  cable  all  critical  matters  are  discussed  and  set- 
tled between  the  foreign  ministers  of  the  several  countries 
without  the  intervention  of  our  representatives.  I  do  not  .think 
that  ambassadors  will  ever  be  abolished.  The  impersonal  can 
never  take  the  place  of  the  personal.  Everything  in  the  end 
comes  back  to  the  man  and  his  fitness  for  the  particular  duty 
which  he  has  assigned  to  him.  The  ambassador  is  the  repre- 
sentative not  only  of  his  government  but  of  his  people.  He 
has  the  power,  and  if  he  possesses  the  ability,  he  promotes  as 
the  cold  type  of  the  formal  message  never  could,  friendship 
and  good  fellowship  between  the  people  of  his  country  and  the 
people  of  the  country  to  which  he  is  accredited.  The  ambas- 
sador generally  represents  his  period  in  his  own  land.  In 


68 

Washington's  time  France  sent  here  Citizen  Genet ;  in  our 
day,  Ambassador  Jusserand.  Citizen  Genet  represented  the 
spirit  of  the  terror  in  the  French  Revolution.  He  proceeded 
to  stir  up  the  country  by  speeches  at  banquets  and  town  meet- 
ings in  favor  of  an  alliance  with  France  against  Great  Britain 
in  the  long  journey  that  he  made  before  he  arrived  at  Phila- 
delphia and  presented  his  credentials.  He  demanded  of  Wash- 
ington an  alliance,  offensive  and  defensive,  and  a  declaration 
of  war  against  Great  Britain.  Washington  saw  that  such  an 
act  at  that  time,  with  France  fully  engaged  in  a  battle  with  all 
Europe,  would  only  lead  to  forces  coming  over  from  Canada 
and  ships  entering  our  ports  when  our  young  Republic  had 
no  money,  very  little  credit  and  had  been  exhausted  by  the 
Revolutionary  War.  But  the  memory  of  the  friendship  of 
France  stirred  up  popular  enthusiasm  for  Citizen  Genet's  prop- 
osition. When  he  found  Washington  could  not  be  moved,  he 
tried  a  referendum  to  the  American  people  and  a  recall.  If  at 
that  time  these  two  propositions  had  been  in  existence  there  is 
no  doubt  but  what  by  an  enormous  majority  war  would  have 
been  declared  against  England,  an  alliance  would  have  been 
made  with  the  leaders  of  the  French  Revolution  and  Washing- 
ton would  have  been  recalled  from  the  presidency,  and  the 
most  violent  of  men  placed  in  the  presidential  chair.  How- 
ever, the  referendum  and  recall  had  not  then  materialized  into 
laws  and  Washington  summarily  dismissed  the  minister  by 
demanding  his  immediate  recall.  Within  six  months  the  whole 
country,  with  greater  unanimity  even,  had  recovered  from  the 
craze  which  Citizen  Genet  had  created  and  stood  solidly  behind 
the  policy  of  General  Washington. 

A  century  and  a  quarter  have  passed  and  the  French 
Republic  has  here  again  a  citizen  who  represents  the  genius  of 
the  institutions  of  his  country,  the  aspirations  of  his  people 
and  their  sentiments  toward  us.  He  carries  his  mission  to  the 
President.  If  he  succeeds  both  nations  rejoice.  If  he  fails,  he 
has  not  attempted  to  recall  by  a  referendum  either  Roosevelt 
or  Taft.  But  his  failures  are  only  delays.  In  the  end  he  always 
wins.  Writing  histories  in  English  which  become  classics  of 
our  literature,  and  speaking  in  our  tongue,  with  the  eloquence, 
aptness  and  finish  which  make  his  addresses  a  model  for  the 


69 

American  student,  Ambassador  Jusserand  is  that  happy  com- 
bination which  is  the  supremest  result  of  gifted  diplomacy — 
an  American  in  America  and  yet  always  a  Frenchman. 

A  living  memorial  of  President  Taft's  administration  will 
be  the  arbitration  treaties  he  so  happily  conceived.  For  their 
acceptance  the  President  has  had  no  more  efficient  co-worker 
than  the  French  Ambassador. 

Gentlemen,  may  it  be  the  good  fortune  of  France  and 
the  United  States  to  always  have  at  Washington  such  an  Am- 
bassador. May  this  celebration  inaugurated  here  to-night  be 
followed  by  the  passage  by  the  Senate  of  the  treaty  of  per- 
petual arbitration  with  France,  and  may  this  day  find  happy 
expression  in  public  celebrations  for  all  the  future  both  in 
France  and  the  United  States. 


(Stenographically  Reported) 

SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Twenty-sixth  Annual  Lincoln  Dinner 
of  the  Republican  Club  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  in  Commemoration  of  the  Birth  of 
Abraham  Lincoln,  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria, 
February  12,  1912. 

MR.  BANNARD,  President  of  the  Club:  About  four  hours 
ago  I  was  informed  that  both  General  Wood  and  Colonel 
Goethals  had  been  detained  in  Washington  by  the  Committee 
on  Military  Affairs,  and  could  not  possibly  be  with  us.  You 
can  imagine  what  I  did.  I  rang  up  a  certain  gentleman  than 
whom  no  one  is  better  known  in  the  United  States,  and  told 
him  that  our  mortality  of  speakers  was  forty  per  cent.  I 
threw  myself  on  his  neck,  so  far  as  the  telephone  would  permit 
(laughter),  and  when  he  said  he  would  consider  it,  I  could  have 
hugged  him,  if  the  telephone  had  indulged  me.  I  shall  be  his 
friend  for  life,  and  I  want  to  introduce  the  best  speaker  in  the 
world,  and  I  will  give  you  just  one  guess  as  to  who  it  is.  Sena- 
tor Depew.  (Great  cheers  and  applause.) 

CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW. 

Mr.  President,  for  a  man  who  congratulated  himself  that 
he  was  going  to  attend  a  dinner  and  hear  the  President  and 
great  orators,  that  he  had  no  responsibilities,  that  he  should 
enjoy  what  was  offered,  both  in  the  solid  and  fluid,  without 
stint,  when  he  is  sitting  preliminary  to  that,  alongside  of  his 
wife  as  she  is  taking  her  tea  at  six  o'clock,  to  receive  a  tele- 
phone message  like  the  one  which  has  just  been  reported  by 
our  presiding  officer  to  speak  within  an  hour  in  the  place  of 
two  of  the  most  distinguished  men  in  the  country,  is  enough 
to  disturb  a  nervous  man.  (Laughter.) 

General  Garfield  once  said  to  me,  "  You  cannot  take  too 
many  chances  without  hurting  your  reputation."  (Laughter.) 


72 

"  No  man  who  has  made  a  reputation  should  attempt  to  speak 
unless  he  has  been  notified  long  before  and  had  ample  op- 
portunity for  preparation,  and  some  day,  if  you  keep  this 
up,  you  will  make  a  speech,  on  a  short  call,  and  the  failure 
of  it  will  be  so  phenomenal  that  it  will  end  the  reputation 
of  a  lifetime."  (Laughter.)  Remembering  that,  last  sum- 
mer I  called  a  classmate  of  mine,  and  he  compiled  eight  vol- 
umes of  my  speeches,  and  so  I  can  say,  as  did  Daniel  Webster, 
or  somebody  else — I  don't  remember  who — "  The  past,  at 
least,  is  secure."  (Great  laughter  and  applause.) 

When  a  man  speaks  extemporaneously,  he  is  apt  to  be 
apologizing  for  it  for  some  time  afterwards.  There  have  been 
distinguished  examples  of  that  in  our  recent  history.  (Laugh- 
ter.) I  remember  the  charming  lady  who  was  doing  the  best 
she  could,  distributing  tracts  before  she  got  on  the  platform 
to  speak,  and  in  handing  one  to  a  cabby,  he  said  to  her,  "  Ex- 
cuse me,  Miss,  I  am  happily  married,  and  I  don't  believe  in 
divorce";  and  the  tract  was  "Abide  with  me."  (Great 
laughter.) 

I  was  pleased  with  the  speech  of  our  President,  Mr.  Ban- 
nard,  in  which,  after  complimenting  everybody  who  came  here 
to  this  entertainment,  he  said  that  "  without  the  inspiration 
of  the  woman,  where  would  we  be?"  Look  at  him,  look  at 
him,  at  his  time  of  life,  and  he  is  not  married  yet!  (Laughter 
and  applause.) 

Now,  an  occasion  like  this  necessarily  leads  to  a  com- 
parison between  the  past  and-  the  present.  The  first  speech 
I  ever  heard  Mr.  Lincoln  make,  was  the  one  that  he  did  not 
make.  It  was  at  Peekskill.  (Laughter.)  The  whole  popula- 
tion had  gathered  for  the  ten  minutes  in  which  he  was  to 
address  us  on  his  way  to  Washington.  The  local  celebrity, 
who  had  been  in  Congress  with  him,  represented  the  people 
for  the  welcoming  speech,  and  before  the  welcoming  speech 
was  concluded,  the  train  moved  off  with  Mr.  Lincoln  laugh- 
ing. 

In  1864,  there  devolved  upon  me,  as  Secretary  of  State, 
the  duty  of  collecting  soldiers'  votes,  because  the  Legislature 
was  Republican,  and  the  Governor,  Horatio  Seymour,  was  a 
Democrat,  and  so  they  didn't  give  it  to  the  Governor.  I 


73 

stayed  three  months'  in  Washington,  and  Stanton,  Secretary 
of  War,  refused  to  give  me  the  information  necessary  to  reach 
the  New  York  soldiers  in  the  field  with  ballots.  New  York 
had  over  300,000  soldiers  scattered  over  the  South.  In  great 
rage,  after  being  roughly  turned  down  by  Stanton,  I  was 
going  out  of  the  War  Office  one  afternoon,  when  I  met  Elihu 
B.  Washburn,  who  at  that  time  was  the  special  representative 
and  most  intimate  friend  of  Mr.  Lincoln.  I  told  him  what 
was  the  matter,  and  he  said,  "What  are  you  going  to  do  ?  " 
I  said,  "  I  have  got  to  clear  my  own  skirts.  I  am  going  to 
New  -York  to  publish  in  the  papers  that  the  administration 
will  not  give  me  the  localities  where  the  New  York  troops 
are,  and  so  they  cannot  vote."  He  said,  "  Look  here,  Depew, 
that  beats  Lincoln."  "  Well,"  I  said,  "  then  give  me  the  voters' 
addresses."  He  said,  "  You  don't  know  Abe.  He  is  a  great 
President,  but  he  is  also  a  great  politician,  and  if  there  was 
no  other  way  of  getting  those  votes,  he  would  go  around  with 
a  carpet  bag,  and  collect  them  himself."  (Laughter.)  Within 
an  hour  I  was  summoned  into  the  presence  of  a  changed 
Secretary  of  War,  so  polite  that  I  didn't  know  him,  and  on 
the  midnight  train  I  went  off  with  the  locations  of  the  troops. 
The  cause  of  this  quick  transformation  was  the  sudden  ap- 
pearance of  the  President  in  the  War  Office  with  a  message 
so  emphatic  that  the  roaring  Lion  became  the  most  serviceable 
of  Lambs. 

There  has  been  much  criticism  about  a  President  work- 
ing, while  he  is  in  office,  for  reelection,  but  here  is  the 
example,  after  fifty  years,  of  the  man  whom  we  are  celebra- 
ting here  to-night,  who  would  have  gone  around  with  a  carpet 
bag  to  collect  the  votes  if  there  was  no  other  way  of  getting 
them.  And  I  am  sure  our  President,  Mr.  Taft,  is  justified 
in  doing  what  he  can  in  that  line,  as  he  did  so  magnificently 
in  his  speech  here  to-night.  (Great  applause.)  It  certainly 
is  dramatic  for  one  who  has  that  recollection  of  the  year  pre- 
ceding the  presidential  election  of  Mr.  Lincoln,  to  again,  nearly 
fifty  years  afterwards,  be  in  the  hall  with  a  President,  the 
year  before  his  reelection  (great  applause),  with  the  condi- 
tions virtually  unchanged.  It  reminds  me  that  possibly  nothing 
changes  in  this  world.  Certainly,  in  my  long  experience  in 


74 

public  life,  I  have  found  that  nothing  changes  in  the  funda- 
mentals; the  change  is  only  in  the  scenery,  the  surroundings, 
and  the  dramatic  effect. 

We  celebrated  in  December,  the  landing  of  the  May- 
flower. Why?  Because,  in  the  cabin  of  the  Mayflower,  was 
enunciated  that  charter  which  first  gave  the  principle  of  equal- 
ity of  all  men  before  the  law.  We  celebrated  here,  this  last 
week,  the  first  treaty  ever  made  by  the  United  States,  the 
treaty  with  France  which  gave  to  us  Lafayette,  Rochambeau, 
and  DeGraff,  and  the  French  army  and  the  French  navy, 
and  the  credit  and  munitions  of  war,  which  enabled  us  to  win 
our  independence.  We  celebrate  to-night  Mr.  Lincoln  and 
his  administration  of  fifty  years  ago,  and  we  will  celebrate, 
on  the  twenty-second  of  this  month,  Washington's  Birthday, 
with  all  that  it  means.  Last  summer  I  was  in  France,  and 
I  went  out  one  Sunday  to  Versailles,  where  all  Paris  goes, 
and  I  accompanied  the-  crowd  as  they  walked  through  that 
marvelous  palace  of  Louis  XIV,  and  as  they  paused  in  the 
rooms,  full  of  memories  of  Napoleon,  the  Empress  Josephine, 
and  Marie  Antoinette.  What  struck  me  more  than  anything 
else,  accustomed  as  I  have  been,  all  my  life,  to  go  to  historic 
places  in  America  where  there  was  enthusiasm  and  reverence, 
was  that  those  people  went  by  as  sightseers  and  tourists,  be- 
cause Versailles,  with  its  memories  of  the  Bourbon  kings,  and 
Napoleon,  of  an  absolute  autocracy,  and  an  empire,  conveyed 
nothing  to  them.  Their  memories  were  only  of  the  thirty-odd 
years  of  the  republic. 

But  we  are  what  we  are  to-day  because  of  our  tradi- 
tions, and  our  traditions  never  change :  the  traditions  of 
equality  before  the  law  enunciated  in  the  cabin  of  the  May- 
flower, the  traditions  of"  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in 
Independence  Hall,  the  traditions  of  Washington  and  what 
he  stood  for  and  what  he  accomplished,  and  to-night,  the  tra- 
ditions of  what  Lincoln  stood  for.  We  are  here  now  as  a 
Republican  club,  and  Lincoln  was  a  Republican  President. 
All  sides  of  him  have  been  superbly  presented.  The  tribute 
which  President  Taft  paid  was  finely  said  and  deserved,  that 
he  was  the  President  of  all  parties;  and  that  beautiful  tribute, 
so  eloquent  and  appreciative,  by  the  orator  of  the  evening, 


75 

as  to  Lincoln's  characteristics,  from  a  Southern  man,  was 
equally  deserved.  But  Lincoln  was  a  partisan,  and  a  Re- 
publican. We  are  here  to-night  as  partisans  and  Republicans, 
most  of  us. 

Lincoln  stood  for  what?  For  the  question  of  his  day. 
Have  they  changed?  They  have  changed  only  in  form.  We 
have  not  the  slave  labor  question  any  longer,  but  we  have 
labor  questions  which  are  to  be  decided  upon  broad  prin- 
ciples, as  Lincoln  would  have  decided  them  if  they  had  arisen 
in  his  time.  He  had  to  provide  revenue  for  the  purpose  of 
supporting  the  army  and  navy  and  carrying  on  the  Government. 
He  had  to  develop  the  resources  of  the  country  which  would 
support  the  people  here,  if  we  won,  and  while  we  were  fight- 
ing. Now,  what  did  he  do?  He  inaugurated  and  carried 
through  the  most  drastic  measure  of  protection  of  American' 
industries  that  any  President  ever  suggested.  It  was  full 
protection,  not  so  high  but  that  it  furnished  revenue,  and  yet 
high  enough  to  cause  the  development  of  one  industry  after 
another,  and  to  continue  to  the  laboring  man  of  this  country 
that  measure  of  wage  which  makes  him  more  independent, 
and  with  greater  possibilities  and  hopefulness  than  ever  existed 
before  in  any  country  in  the  world.  (Applause.) 

We  come  down  to  our  own  time,  and  we  have  meeting 
us,  and  meeting  President  Taft,  very  much  the  same  things 
that  met  Lincoln,  so  far  as  the  fundamentals  are  con- 
cerned, or  the  principles  upon  which  we  fight.  And  I  want  to 
say,  as  a  veteran  campaigner  who  has  stumped  this  country 
for  different  Presidents  for  fifty-six  years  (applause),  that 
the  speech  of  forty  minutes  made  here  to-night  by  President 
Taft  will  be  the  text-book  of  the  campaign.  We  will  all 
copy  from  it,  we  will  all  take  texts  from  it,  and  we  will  make 
the  welkin  ring  all  over  the  country  with  the  achievements 
of  the  Taft  Administration  which  it  merits  and  the  promises 
it  contains,  and  if  it  results,  as  it  ought  to,  in  his  election 
next  November,  we  will  say,  "Taft,  you  did  it!"  (Great 
cheers  and  applause,  and  cries  of  "  Hear,  hear!  ") 

I  was  reading  to-night  in  an  English  paper  the  speech 
made  by  Shuster  in  London  (applause),  and  it  was  a  re- 
newal of  faith  in  the  great  principles  for  which  Lincoln 


76 

stood,  for  which  Washington  stood,  and  for  which  every 
statesman  in  America  who  is  successful  must  stand.  He 
says,  in  effect,  "  I  went  to  Persia,  commissioned  to  put  her 
finances  in  order.  I  found  universal  corruption.  I  found 
the  money  was  ample,  but  it  was  all  diverted  to  the  personal 
use  of  grafters,  from  royalty  down.  I  said  to  the  first  con- 
stituent assembly,  elected  by  the  people,  that  Persia  ever  had 
in  all  her  history,  from  the  time  of  Cyrus  the  Great,  '  Will 
you  give  me  power  to  do  as  I  have  a  mind  to  ? '  And  they 
said,  '  Yes  '  unanimously."  "  Then,"  he  said,  "  I  found  there 
was  money  enough  for  all  purposes,  and  I  began  to  collect 
it,  and  to  apply  it  to  the  legitimate  purposes  of  the  resur- 
rection of  Persia,  so  that  she  could  stand  upon  her  liberal 
principles,  and  go  ahead,  when  Russian  suddenly  said,  'That 
is  not  what  you  are  here  for ;  what  we  want  is  demoralization 
and  bankruptcy,  because  that  is  our  opportunity  to  seize 
Persia.'  " 

Well,  my  friends,  contrast  that  with  the  principles  that 
have  been  at  the  bottom  of  American  policies  in  treating 
with  other  countries.  Contrast  it  with  our  treatment  of  the 
Philippines,  of  Cuba,  of  Hawaii,  contrast  it  with  what  we  did 
when  one  of  the  greatest  of  our  secretaries  of  state,  our  own 
club  member,  Elihu  Root,  made  his  famous  visit,  as  Secretary 
of  State,  to  the  Southern  Republics.  (Applause.) 

Somebody  says — I  don't  know  who ;  Governor  Black, 
with  his  marvelous  memory  will  recall  it — that  there  will 
never  be  anything  but  war  tumult  and  revolution  south  of 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  but  the  policy  of  the  American  Govern- 
ment, under  Roosevelt,  and  under  Taft,  is  giving  to  those 
American  republics  on  the  Isthmus  and  in  South  America, 
greater  stability  than  ever  before,  because  we  stand  behind 
them  and  say,  "We  don't  want  your  territory,  we  don't  want 
an  inch  of  your  land,  we  don't  want  any  influence  with  you 
except  to  protect  you  under  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  but  what 
we  do  demand  is  that  you  shall  work  out  your  own  salvation 
on  the  eternal  principles  of  our  Declaration  of  Independence 
and  of  the  charter  of  equal  laws  of  the  Mayflower  and  due 
regard  for  your  international  obligations."  (Applause.)  And 
that  is  dollar  diplomacy! 


77 

Lincoln  was  President  fifty  years  ago;  Taft  is  Presi- 
dent to-night.  Lincoln  was  a  candidate  for  reelection  fifty 
years  ago;  Taft  to-night  is  a  candidate  for  reelection.  What 
is.  the  difference  between  the  two 'men?  Mr.  Taft  is  the 
product  of  the  school  and  the  college.  He  is  the  product  of 
the  best  culture  America  can .  give.  He  is  the  product  of 
the  training  which  has  given  him  that  judicial  mind  which 
has  enabled  him  to  decide  more  questions  than  almost  any 
other  President  in  my  time,  and  decide  them  right;  which  has 
enabled  him  to  present  more  constructive  and  progressive 
legislation,  and  secure  it,  than  most  Presidents,  and  yet,  as 
a  scholar  and  a  judge,  he  lacks  the  faculty  of  advertisement 
and  a  brass  band.  (Laughter  and  applause.)  If  he  had  those 
two  qualities,  he  would  be  resistless.  Every  dead  wall  in  the 
country,  and  every  farmer's  fence,  and  every  home,  would 
be  filled  with  pictures  and  flaming  eloquence  which  would  in- 
dicate that  the  salvation  of  every  man,  woman  and  child,  had 
been  secured,  built  up  and  riveted,  and  with  another  term 
would  be  fenced  in  and  whitewashed  over  head,  and  nothing 
more  could  be  done  by  any  human  being.  (Laughter.) 

We  come  to  Lincoln.  He  was  a  different  man.  No 
one  in  any  country  ever  started  life  so  unpromisingly  as 
Abraham  Lincoln.  Nothing  equals  the  poverty  and  hopeless- 
ness of  a  poor  white  cabin  in  the  South,  and  especially  at 
that  time.  And  yet  he  came  out  of  that,  for  there  was  in  him 
the  wonderful  genius  which  nobody  can  account  for.  You 
can't  account  for  Milton  or  Shakespeare.  You  can't  account  for 
Lincoln.  The  first  books  he  got  hold  of,  he  read  over  and  over. 
First  was  the  Bible,  next  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  and  next 
"  ./Esop's  Fables,"  and  next  Weem's  "  Life  of  Washington." 
Those  made  him  a  story  teller,  because  Weem's  "  Life  of 
Washington  "  has  probably  within  its  pages  more  stories  that 
never  happened  to  Washington,  than  any  book  ever  written. 
(Loughter.)  In  Weem's  "  Life  of  Washington,"  you  find  the 
cherry  tree  story,  and  nowhere  else.  (Laughter.)  And  yet  that 
lie  has  done  infinite  good  to  all  the  youths  of  the  country  (laugh- 
ter), because  it  was  a  fundamental  lie  in  the  defense  of  the 
truth.  "  yEsop's  Fables  "  furnished  him  with  stories.  I  found 
out  this  about  Lincoln,  that  he  never  argued  anything.  He  sim- 


ply  told  a  story,  or  else  cracked  a  joke,  but  it  met  the  thing  on 
all  fours,  so  that  if  you  were  on  the  opposite  side,  you  had 
nothing  to  say.  (Laughter.)  My  old  friend,  John  Ganson, 
the  ablest  lawyer  we  had  in  Western  New  York,  was  a  war 
Democrat,  and  he  supported  Mr.  Lincoln.  He  was  a  -fine 
looking,  very  dignified  man,  with  a  very  impressive  appear- 
ance and  way  of  talking,  and  he  had  not  a  spear  of  hair  on 
his  head  or  anywhere  about  his  face.  He  went  up  one  day, 
he  told  me,  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  when  things  looked  very  bad  at 
the  front,  and  everybody  was  discouraged,  and  he  said,  "  Mr. 
President,  you  know,  sir,  that  I  am  a  war  Democrat.  I  am 
leaving  my  party  to  support  your  measures,  because  I  be- 
lieve in  the  country  first  and  the  party  next.  Now,  things 
look  very  bad  at  the  front,  and  I  think,  with  this  relation  to 
you  and  your  administration,  I  ought  to  know  just  how  things 
are.  How  are  they,  sir  ? "  Mr.  Lincoln  looked  at  him  for 
a  minute,  and  then  said,  in  his  quizzical  way,  "  Ganson,  how 
clean  you  shave!"  (Great  laughter.)  There  was  a  party 
of  New  York  financiers  who  went  down  to  Washington,  and 
the  New  York  financier  is  a  mighty  able  man — in  Wall  Street. 
But  he  sees  the  present,  and  he  wants  to  provide  for  that. 
The  financial  situation  was  frightful,  because  gold  was  so  re- 
duced in  volume  and  at  an  unprecedented  premium.  They  said : 
"Mr.  President,  we  are  here  representing  the  financial  interests 
in  the  financial  center  of  the  country,  and  we  think  that  the  best 
thing  to  do  is  to  take  the  gold  out  of  the  treasury  and  give  it  to 
the  people."  But  Mr.  Lincoln  knew  that  what  little  gold  there 
was  in  the  treasury  was  all  the  basis  the  country  had  for  its 
credit,  and  the  enormous  volume  of  paper  currency  which  had 
been  put  out.  Did  he  argue  that  question  with  those  financiers  ? 
No,  he  knew  they  would  beat  him  out  of  sight  in  an  argu- 
ment, but  he  said  to  them :  "  Gentlemen,  out  in  Illinois,  when 
I  was  practicing  law,  the  farmers  were  troubled  because  of 
a  disease  among  the  hogs  that  was  carrying  them  off  and 
likely  to  destroy  the  whole  of  that  industry.  Someone  sug- 
gested that  the  way  to  cure  the  hogs  was  to  cut  off  their  tails. 
So  they  cut  them  off,  and  they  were  cured.  The  next  year 
the  same  disease  came  back,  but  they  all  died  because  they 
had  no  tails."  (Great  laughter  and  applause.) 


79 

No  man  recovers  from  his  environment  and  the  influences 
of  his  birth,  and  the  associations  of  his  childhood,  no  matter 
how  great  may  be  his  opportunities  afterwards,  no  matter  how 
wonderful  the  culture  that  has  come  to  him,  nor  how  supreme 
his  ability  to  take  advantage  of  them.  The  environment  of  his 
humble  home  will  always  cling  to  him,  and  always  be  in  evi- 
dence. Lincoln  passed  the  whole  of  that  formative  period  of 
his  life  among  a  frontier  people.  He  had  singular  and  original 
experiences.  He  loved  to  be  down  at  the  country  store,  or  the 
bar  room  of  the  village  tavern,  although  he  never  drank,  and 
there  exchange  stories  and  listen  to  stories  among  those  adven- 
turous and  original  people.  That  bar  room  was  the  neighbor- 
hood club  in  those  days.  He  loved  to  go  around  the  circuit, 
and  when  they  reached  the  country  towns,  they  all  stopped  at 
the  same  hotel,  and  they  stayed  up  all  night — the  judge  and  the 
lawyers  and  the  witnesses,  and  the  grand  and  petit  jury  men — 
swapping  these  experiences.  I  asked  him  once,  "  Where  do 
you  get  so  many  stories  ?  "  And  he  told  me  that  it  was  in  this 
way  that  I  have  just  described.  So  he  got  into  the  habit,  much 
to  the  disgust  of  Chase,  who  was  a  "  turvy  drop,"  and  of  other 
people  around  him,  of  meeting  questions  with  these  stories, 
most  of  which  are  not  in  print.  (Laughter.) 

On  the  other  side,  there  was  another  Lincoln  formed  on 
his  daily  reading  of  the  Bible,  which  he  knew  by  heart,  and 
Bunyan's  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  which  he  knew  by  heart. 
The  English  language,  in  its  noblest  form  as  it  is  to-day,  has 
been  formed  by  the  King  James  version  of  the  English  Bible. 
It  has  been  literature,  pure  and  undefiled,  which  has  given  to 
our  writers,  in  the  English  tongue,  their  distinction,  and  in- 
spiration. That  formed  Lincoln's  style.  It  also  formed  the 
basis  from  which  he  built  up  those  principles  of  eternal  truth 
which  led  to  the  Emancipation  Proclamation,  which  led  also 
to  his  infinite  charity,  which  would  have  eradicated  many 
evils  had  he  lived  to  go  through  his  second  term.  It  was  the 
education  from  this  foundation  which  gave  to  the  world  those 
two  imperishable  productions,  that  oration  which  will  live 
forever,  the  Gettysburg  speech,  and  that  finest  State  paper 
ever  written  by  a  President,  and  which  never  can  be  copied, 
Lincoln's  second  inaugural  address.  (Great  applause.) 


SPEECH  BY  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Celebration  by  the  New  York  State 
Society  of  the  Cincinnati  of  the  One  Hun- 
dred and  Eightieth  Birthday  of  George 
Washington,  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria,  Feb- 
ruary 22,  1912. 

COMRADES  OF  THE  CINCINNATI  :  It  is  eminently  fitting 
that  this  Society  should  celebrate  the  birthday  of  its  founder, 
General  George  Washington.  One  hundred  and  eighty  years 
have  passed  since  his  birth.  The  story  of  that  century  and 
three-quarters,  or  at  least  the  last  century  of  it,  is  the  most 
illuminating  and  inspiring  cycle  of  recorded  time.  It  is  our 
pride  and  satisfaction  as  Americans  that  to  marvelous  devel- 
opment, uplift  and  progress  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  in  this 
century  no  one  contributed  so  much  as  George  Washington. 

It  is  a  happy  result  of  the  continuance  of  this  patriotic 
order  that  there  has  been  a  revival  of  the  study  of  the  origin 
of  our  institutions,  of  the  formation  of  the  Republic  and  of 
the  lives  and  characters  of  the  founders. 

There  are  many  other  patriotic  societies  celebrating  this 
day  who  have  come  into  existence  within  the  last  half  century, 
and  who  are  doing  admirable  work  in  the  education  of  the 
citizen  by  furnishing  him  with  the  inspirations  of  the  past.  In 
my  close  connection  for  many  years  with  education,  as  Regent 
of  the  University  of  the  State  of  New  York  for  thirty  years, 
and  a  member  of  the  Corporation  of  Yale  University  for 
twelve  years,  I  have  been  deeply  interested  in  the  work  of  the 
common  schools,  academies  and  colleges.  I  have  found  that 
one  great  defect  is  in  the  inadequate  attention  given  to  Ameri- 
can history.  Many  of  the  wild  theories,  which  now  attract  the 
young  and  in  the  guise  of  reform  seem  to  promise  far  better 
results  than  any  which  have  been  secured  in  the  past,  would 
never  have  taken  such  hold  upon  the  imagination  if  there  had 
been  careful  and  systematic  instruction  in  the  history  of  our 
Republic  and  of  the  principles  which  lay  at  its  foundation.  I 


82 

doubt  if  the  majority  in  any  high  school  or  college  of  the 
country,  if  called  upon  on  this  day  to  pass  an  examination  upon 
the  life,  character  and  achievements  of  General  Washington, 
or  Hamilton,  or  Jefferson,  or  Madison,  could  succeed.  I 
doubt  if  even  a  small  minority  know  that  in  those  early  days 
and  during  the  experimental  stage,  questions  of  Federal  au- 
thority, State  rights,  checks  to  prevent  hasty  and  ill-considered 
action,  of  independence  of  the  courts,  and  of  representative 
government,  were  all  thrashed  out. 

To-night  fashionable  society  is  having  many  balls  and 
dances  because  this  is  a  national  holiday.  General  Washington 
was  exceedingly  fond  of  dancing,  and  was  noted  as  being  the 
most  expert  and  graceful  dancer  of  his  day,  but  he  knew  noth- 
ing of  the  "Turkey  Trot"  or  the  "Bunny  Hug"  or  the  "Grizzly 
Bear."  If  these  young  people  should  be  asked  at  the  supper 
what  is  the  significance  of  this  day  and  what  the  place  of  Gen- 
eral Washington  in  history,  I  doubt  if  they  would  be  able  to 
respond.  They  would  return  to  the  "Turkey  Trot." 

A  very  brilliant  and  highly  cultured  and  traveled  young 
woman  said  to  me,  "Why  bother  about  those  old  times  and  the 
great  people  of  that  day?  What  they  did  is  of  no  interest  to 
us,  though  undoubtedly  it  was  important  then.  I  have  no  use 
for  the  ancients." 

It  is  the  distinction  of  the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati  that 
it  has  lived  with  content  and  satisfaction  for  nearly  two  hun- 
dred years  without  being  disturbed  in  its  organization  by  the 
cataclysms  which  have  occurred  during  that  long  period.  Poli- 
tics have  never  entered  its  councils,  nor  have  religious  factions 
or  disputes  disturbed  its  membership.  It  has  lived  through 
and  survived  every  Presidency  in  our  history. 

It  has  become  the  fashion  now  for  men  distinguished  in 
any  department  of  life  before  they  die  to  write  their  auto- 
biographies or  print  their  diaries.  If  the  recorder  of  the  Cin- 
cinnati had  kept  a  close  diary  of  the  inner  councils  of  each 
Presidential  administration,  beginning  with  Washington,  and 
the  troubles  in  their  cabinets,  it  would  be  a  wonderful  con- 
tribution to  the  history  of  the  times.  As  the  past  recedes  and 
the  men  and  events  grow  more  dim,  we  need  this  personal 
revelation  to  show  the  supreme  authority  exercised  for  the 


83 

creation  and  afterward  for  the  salvation  of  the  young  Republic 
until  it  was  put  upon  a  firm  basis  by  George  Washington. 
The  value  of  such  a  contribution  is  brought  emphatically  to 
our  attention  by-  the  diary  of  Gideon  Welles,  who  was  a  mem- 
ber of  President  Lincoln's  Cabinet.  It  was  my  fortune  to  be 
officially  in  Washington  during  much  of  the  Lincoln  Adminis- 
tration and  to  know  of  the  gossip  which  filtered  from  the 
White  House  as  to  the  motives  and  ambitions  of  the  President's 
official  family.  There  are  few  now  living  who  had  the  oppor- 
tunity or  who  knew  any  of  these  events,  but  here  from  the 
pen  of  this  hard-headed  Yankee  who  had  but  one  ambition, 
and  that  was  to  serve  his  chief  and  save  the  country,  comes  a 
diary  written  day  by  day,  showing  the  intrigues  for  power,  for 
influence  with  the  President,  for  replacing  him  for  their  own 
ambitions,  for  succession  among  the  members  of  his  cabinet. 
The  great  value  of  the  revelation  is  that  while  these  great  men 
were"  most  efficient  in  their  several  departments  of  the  State 
and  Foreign  Affairs,  or  the  Treasury  and  Finance,  or  War,  or 
the  Navy,  or  the  Post  Office,  they  were  bitterly  antagonistic 
to  each  other.  But  they  were  compelled  to  use  their  great 
abilities  in  their  several  ways  for  the  government  and  its  sal- 
vation. They  were  compelled  to  suppress  and  keep  under 
cover  their  machinations  and  their  conspiracies  against  each 
other  and  against  their  chief,  and  they  presented  a  united 
front  to  the  enemy  on  the  one  hand  and  the  country  on  the 
other  because  of  the  tact,  the  diplomacy,  the  genius  and  the 
magnetic  power  of  Abraham  Lincoln. 

We  know  that  Washington,  the  soldier,  was  the  only  one 
of  the  generals  of  the  time  who  could  have  carried  on  success- 
fully the  Revolutionary  War,  and  so  he  was  "The  Father  of 
his  Country."  We  know  that  in  the  trials  and  experiments  of 
bringing  a  confederacy  of  independent  governments  into  a 
federation  of  sovereign  states,  and  yet  with  supreme  power  in 
the  Federal  Government,  no  man  and  no  combination  of  men 
had  so  much  influence  as  General  Washington.  We  know 
that  in  securing  the  ratification  of  the  Constitution,  framed  by 
a  convention  of  the  several  States,  he  used  with  wonderful 
effect  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  his  army  who  were  prominent 
citizens  in  their  several  States  and  who  had  taken  the  oath  of 


84 

the  Society  of  the  Cincinnati  to  preserve  and  perpetuate  the 
Union.  We  know  that  during  his  eight  years  as  President 
only  his  commanding  influence  and  courage  with  the  people, 
who  knew  that  he  was  serving  tliem  and  longing  for  the  oppor- 
tunity to  retire  to  private  life,  prevented  our  young  Republic 
becoming  an  ally  of  the  French  Revolution  and  involved  in  a 
war  with  all  Europe  when  we  had  neither  credit,  nor  money, 
nor  arms.  We  all  know  that  except  for  his  commanding  in- 
fluence the  revolutions  which  were  started  in  various  States 
would  have  culminated  into  a  dissolution  of  the  Union.  We 
all  know  that  at  the  end  of  eight  years  he,  and  he  alone,  had 
so  consolidated  our  institutions  that  they  could  be  entrusted 
safely  to  other  hands  because  behind  the  politicians  were  the 
people,  educated  to  the  benefits  of  government,  of  the  Consti- 
tution and  the  laws.  Now,  this  could  have  been  brought  out 
much  more  clearly  if  there  had  been  a  Gideon  Welles  in  the 
cabinet  of  General  Washington.  The  two  ablest  men,  the 
greatest  rivals  and  bitterest  enemies  of  that  period,  were  mem- 
bers of  his  official  family,  Alexander  Hamilton  and  Thomas 
Jefferson.  Each  represented  antagonistic  views  of  government. 
Each  had  tremendous  following  among  the  people,  but  they 
worked  together  and  subordinated  their  views  to  the  general 
good,  and  how  they  did  it  is  left  to  the  imagination.  And  yet 
it  requires  no  diary  of  a  member  of  that  cabinet ;  it  requires 
no  stretch  of  the  imagination  to  draw  from  the  records  of  the 
times',  meager  as  they  are  in  this  respect,  the  daily  story  of 
Washington  and  his  official  family.  We  can  see  towering 
above  them  all  the  great  master  builder,  keeping  each  in  his 
place  and  performing  the  work  for  which  he  was  fitted  beyond 
all  other  men  in  the  country,  and  at  the  same  time  making 
it  impossible  for  their  individual  jealousies  and  ambitions  to 
disturb  the  creative  and  consolidating  work  of  their  chief. 

Now,  gentlemen,  nothing  more  astonishes  the  careful 
reader  of  history  than  the  few  men  who  have  controlled  the 
destinies  of  nations  and  of  mankind.  Julius  Caesar  came  into 
power  when  wealth  and  corruption  had  so  undermined  the 
Republic  and  enervated  its  virility  that  its  dissolution  into  its 
original  elements  with  universal  warfare  was  imminent.  By 
the  creation  of  imperial  authority  he  kept  together  that  empire 


85 

for  a  thousand  years.  Outside  its  boundaries  travel  was  im- 
possible ;  within  its  boundaries  there  was  Roman  law  and 
protection  on  the  highway.  This  made  possible  the  dissemina- 
tion of  Christianity  through  the  whole  Roman  world,  an  event 
which  would  have  been  impossible  under  the  old  savage  rela- 
tions of  contiguous  nations,  and  this  made  possible  modern 
Christendom. 

The  French  Revolution  would  have  failed  except  for  the 
genius  of  Napoleon.  His  aims  were  not  republican,  nor  the 
dissemination  of  liberty,  but  in  the  name  of  liberty  he  over- 
threw thrones  and  spread  liberal  ideas  and  overturned  nearly 
all  autocracy  and  absolutism  and  despotism  except  his  own. 
Waterloo  ended  him  but  placed  no  barrier  to  the  progress  of 
Democracy.  England,  with  a  Parliamentary  government  more 
quickly  responsive  to  the  people  than  any  in  the  world,  France 
a  republic,  all  other  European  nations  with  a  Parliament,  and 
most  of  them  a  responsible  ministry,  Turkey  and  ancient 
Persia  feeling  the  thrill  of  these  ideas,  are  all  the  results  of 
the  work,  genius,  conquests  and  triumphs  of  Napoleon.  So, 
for  liberty,  as  we  understand  it,  and  as  we  enjoy  it,  the  abso- 
lute sovereignty  of  the  people,  the  equality  of  all  men  before 
the  law,  the  freedom  of  opportunity  for  every  child,  all  these 
are  due  to  the  character,  courage,  unselfish  patriotism  and 
genius  of  George  Washington.  Caesar  was  inspired  by  ambi- 
tion, Napoleon  by  craze  for  power — both  utterly  selfish.  Wash- 
ington's labors  were  for  his  country.  In  the  purity  of  his 
motive  he  stands  the  foremost  man  of  all  the  centuries. 

We  have  problems  which  seem  to  us  full  of  peril,  but  they 
are  not  so  difficult  as  those  which  he  successfully  solved.  We 
are  passing  through  an  acute  struggle,  common  not  only  to  us, 
but  to  the  whole  world,  between  labor  and  capital.  We  have 
greater  general  prosperity,  a  higher  standard  of  living  and  more 
universal  conditions  of  comfort  than  has  ever  existed  among 
any  people,  or  our  own  people  before,  and  yet  there  never 
was  such  a  wide-spread  spirit  of  unrest.  We  are  entering  upon 
a  presidential  election,  and  the  different  candidates  are  pre- 
senting to  us  their  methods  for  solving  these  difficulties  and 
allaying  this  unrest.  In  the  meantime,  business  halts,  enter- 
prises are  suspended  and  the  movement  of  the  mighty  forces 


86 

which  give  employment  and  opportunity  is  checked.  Fre- 
quently I  hear  a  cry  of  anger  and  despair.  Gentlemen,  so 
long  as  we  can  celebrate  in  proper  spirit  the  birthday  of  Gen- 
eral Washington,  so  long  as  we  can  read  and  re-read  his 
Farewell  Address,  so  long  as  we  can  remember  and  cherish  the 
memory  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  so  long  as  we  can  repeat  his 
Gettysburg  speech  and  his  second  inaugural,  there  will  come 
into  the  Presidency  and  into  the  Cabinet,  and  into  Congress, 
and  into  the  courts,  the  wisdom  which  has  guided  us  mar- 
velously  in  the  past  and  will  surely  take  care  of  us  in  the 
future. 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Dinner  Given  by  the  United  Swedish 
Societies  and  the  John  Ericsson  Memorial 
Association,  March  g,  1912,  at  the  Park 
Avenue  Hotel,  New  York  City,  in  Celebra- 
tion of  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary  of  the  Battle 
between  Monitor  and  Merrimac. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  In  an  age  of  anni- 
versaries and  their  celebration,  yours  is  unique.  It  is  a  tribute 
to  a  genius  so  modest  that  the  immortality  due  him  for  his 
invaluable  invention  has  never  been  accorded. 

The  latter  part  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  with  us  was 
full  of  centennials,  commencing  with  that  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  and,  continuing  through  the  various  battles 
of  the  Revolution,  they  ended  with  the  adoption  of  the  Con- 
stitution, the  inauguration  of  the  first  President  and  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  We  celebrate 
still  with  appropriate  ceremonies  the  recurring  birthdays  of 
Washington  and  Lincoln.  The  educational  value  of  these 
memorial  exercises  cannot  be  overestimated.  Each  celebra- 
tion is  a  university  education  completed  in  a  single  day — an 
education  in  the  best  history  of  one's  country,  and  an  inspira- 
tion for  patriotism.  The  Bunker  Hill  Monument  gave  to  the 
world  the  oration  of  Daniel  Webster,  which,  appearing  there- 
after in  the  school  books,  did  more  to  inform  the  youth  of  the 
United  States  of  the  virtues  and  achievements  of  their  fore- 
fathers and  of  the  principles  underlying  the  institutions  of 
their  country  than  all  the  histories  in  existence. 

It  is  interesting  to  glance  over  the  speeches  in  and  out  of 
Congress  during  the  first  fifty  years  after  the  formation  of  the 
Government.  They  show  that  the  orator  understood  that  he 
must  appeal  to  lively  recollections  among  his  constituents  of 
the  great  revolution  with  which  they  were  all  familiar.  During 
the  subsequent  fifty  years  commercialism  and  industrialism, 
attendant  upon  the  marvelous  progress  and  development  of  the 


country,  practically  obliterated  both  memory  and  influence  in 
regard  to  the  story  of  the  creation  of  our  government,  or  of  the 
soldiers  and  statesmen  whose  valor  and  wisdom  made  the 
struggle  triumphant. 

In  estimating  the  value  of  the  reproduction  of  the  events 
or  the  retelling  of  the  story  of  heroes  and  statesmen,  I  think 
that  the  interest  centers  around  the  individual.  Events  are 
innumerable.  The  mind,  with  the  ordinary  pursuits,  struggles, 
successes  and  failures  of  life,  has  no  time  to  grasp  them  all, 
or  to  study  the  details  necessary  to  understand  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  results.  But  the  romance  of  the  hero  has  a  per- 
petual charm.  If  the  boy  and  the  girl  are  thoroughly  familiar 
with  George  Washington,  Daniel  Webster  and  Abraham  Lin- 
coln they  will  grasp  most  that  it  is  necessary  to  know  in  regard 
to  the  story  of  American  independence  and  evolution,  of  crises 
and  how  they  were  overcome  successfully,  of  American  valor, 
of  the  constitution  and  of  representative  government  and  the 
value  for  yesterday,  to-day  and  forever  of  American  liberty. 

To  understand  what  this  day  signifies  we  must  in  imag- 
ination throw  a  picture  upon  the  wall  of  conditions  in  the 
United  States,  and  between  the  United  States  and  the  world, 
in  1862.  Happily,  in  the  fraternizing  of  the  combatants,  in 
their  equal  share  in  the  benefits  of  this  most  beneficent  of 
governments  and  equal  power  and  responsibility  in  its  admin- 
istration, the  bitterness  of  that  period  has  passed  away,  the 
flame  of  its  passionate  resentment  has  died  out  and  we  can 
calmly,  from  either  side,  study  the  heroic  picture  of  men  of 
the  same  blood,  differently  trained  and  with  different  ideals, 
fighting  and  dying  as  only  such  men  can,  for  what  they  deemed 
to  be  right. 

I  remember  that  year  as  if  it  were  yesterday.  The  Civil 
War  had  been  a  drawn  battle  between  the  North  and  the 
South,  a  free  labor  or  a  slave  holding  republic.  Mr.  Lincoln 
and  his  administration  had,  in  their  efforts  to  save  the  Union, 
an  interior  line  of  eleven  thousand  miles  to  defend  and  a 
sea  coast  of  three  thousand  miles  to  blockade.  The  United 
States  Navy  had  at  that  time  only  forty  effective  men-of-war. 
The  conspirators  in  the  government,  knowing  that  they  were 
to  bring  about  secession,  had  sent  the  best  and  strongest  of 


89 

these  battleships  to  China  and  the  coast  of  Africa  and  the 
Pacific  Ocean.  There  were  only  eleven  -ships,  carrying  only 
one  hundred  and  thirty-one  guns,  upon  our  Atlantic  coast. 
Less  than  a  year  before  the  appearance  of  the  Monitor,  an 
American  naval  officer  had  taken  off  the  British  steamship 
Trent  Mason  and  Slidell  and  their  secretaries  who  were  going 
to  Europe  as  ambassadors  of  the  Southern  Confederacy,  one 
to  England  and  the  other  to  France,  to  endeavor  to  secure 
recognition  for  their  government.  This  had  brought  us  to  the 
verge  of  war  with  Great  Britain,  which  was  only  averted  by 
the  diplomacy,  skill  and  adroitness  of  Secretary  of  State  Will- 
iam H.  Seward.  The  sympathies  of  the  governments  of  the 
Old  World  were  wholly  with  the  government  of  the  Southern 
Confederacy.  All  these  governments  were  either  absolute 
monarchies  or  constitutional  ones  under  the  control  of  an 
aristocratic  oligarchy.  Tremendous  immigration  to  the  United 
States  had  carried  back  such  ideas  of  American  liberty  as 
were  endangering  thrones  and  old  institutions.  If  this  Civil 
War  should  be  successful  that  danger  would  be  averted  for 
a  generation,  so  the  ruling  classes  in  all  Europe  were  anxious 
for  any  excuse  to  interfere  and  to  break  up  the  American 
Republic.  On  the  other  hand,  a  notion  had  got  abroad  that  the 
slaveholders  of  the  South  were  a  privileged  and  aristocratic 
class,  while  the  North  was  a  nation  of  shopkeepers.  So 
the  sympathies  of  the  hereditary  rulers  were  with  what  they 
deemed  to  be  a  part  of  the  country  whose  governing  people 
were  more  nearly  affiliated  with  themselves.  If  the  Southern 
Confederacy  could  be  recognized  by  the  great  powers  of  Europe 
and  arms  and  munitions  of  war  poured  in  through  the  many 
harbors  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  even  the  superior  population, 
the  greater  wealth  and  the  larger  resources  of  the  North  could 
scarcely  have  been  sufficient  to  save  the  Union. 

In  the  summer  of  1861  the  President,  Congress  and  the 
country  were  informed  that  at  the  Norfolk  Navy  Yard,  which 
had  fallen  into  Confederate  hands,  a  new  and  most  formidable 
ship  of  war  was  being  constructed  on  original  lines.  Some  of 
the  ablest  officers  of  the  American  Navy  had  gone  with  their 
States  into  the  rebellion.  They  had  taken  the  old  frigate 
Merrimac  which  was  at  Norfolk  when  it  was  seized,  and  with 


90 

wonderful  skill  and  ingenuity  were  transforming  her  into  an 
ironclad  impenetrable  to  any  ordnance  then  in  existence. 
There  was  alarm  all  over  the  country.  It  was  fully  thought 
that  if  the  reports  in  regard  to  this  formidable  vessel  were 
true  she  could  destroy  the  eleven  ships  of  the  American  fleet, 
and,  as  our  harbors  were  then  wholly  unprotected  against  such 
a  battleship,  could  enter  and  levy  tribute  upon  Philadelphia, 
New  York  and  Boston.  Delegations  of  bankers  and  commer- 
cial men  were  constantly  going  to  Washington  beseeching  the 
President  to  save  them  from  this  peril.  I  recall  Mr.  Lincoln 
telling  me  in  his  whimsical  way  of  the  arrival  of  such  a  com- 
mittee. They  were  from  New  York.  There  were  a  hundred 
of  them.  He  said  that  all  had  Prince  Albert  coats  and  top 
hats.  Their  several  spokesmen  detailed  the  enormous  amount 
of  wealth  which  they  represented  and  the  millions  which  each 
of  them  individually  possessed.  They  pictured  how  this  war- 
ship could  sail  unimpeded  to  their  docks  and  burn  the  entire 
city  or  else  levy  tribute  sufficient  to  carry  the  war  on  indefi- 
nitely. They  claimed  that  they  were  entitled  to  protection  be- 
cause of  the  liberality  with  which  they  had  subscribed  to  the 
government  bonds.  Mr.  Lincoln  said  that  he  had  never  heard 
or  dreamed  of  so  much  money  being  owned  or  represented  by 
so  few  people.  He  said  to  them,  "Gentlemen,  we  have  no  ships 
to  send  to  New  York;  we  have  no  guns  to  mount  on  your 
forts ;  we  have  no  money,  and  the  whole  credit  and  means  of 
the  government  are  exhausted  in  doing  what  we  can  to  protect 
the  Capital  and  this  tremendous  interior  and  coast  line.  But," 
he  said,  "if  I  had  as  much  money  as  you  say  you  have,"  and 
then  in  his  quaint  way  of  pronouncing,  "and  was  as  'skeered' 
as  you  are,  I  think  I  would  find  means  with  which  to  protect 
my  own  town."  Then  this  delegation  went  to  Congress,  and 
Congress  appropriated  one  million  five  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars to  invite  proposals  for  the  construction  of  any  kind  of  a 
ship  which  would  be  able  to  meet  and  resist  the  attack  of  the 
Merrimac  as  had  been  described.  Of  course,  the  President 
was  immediately  flooded  with  plans  from  every  cracked- 
brained  inventor  in  the  country,  and  the  Navy  Department  was 
kept  nights,  days  and  Sundays  in  the  investigation  of  these 
schemes.  Fortunately,  Captain  John  Ericsson  had  a  reputation 


of  previous  achievement.  He  had  been  the  inventor  of  the 
screw  propeller  which  had  revolutionized  the  commerce  of  the 
world  and  the  battleships  of  all  nations.  He  finally  secured  a 
contract  for  his  device,  in  which  the  experts  had  no  faith,  and 
a  small  part  of  this  appropriation  and  commenced  work  at 
Green  Point,  Long  Island.  He  completed  his  little  Monitor  in 
one  hundred  days,  and  then,  with  Lieutenant  Worden  and  a 
crew,  this  nondescript  craft,  which  was  practically  a  raft  with 
a  revolving  turret,  armed  with  two  eleven-inch  guns,  started 
for  Hampton  Roads.  The  country  knew  nothing  of  the  ship, 
and  the  few  who  did  had  no  faith  in  her,  but  regarded  the 
experiment  as  only  a  desperate  chance.  On  the  8th  of  March, 
1862,  the  dread  moment  arrived  when  the  Merrimac  sailed  out 
into  Chesapeake  Bay.  She  immediately  attacked  the  two 
American  frigates  which  were  there  to  watch  her,  the  Cumber- 
land and  the  Congress.  She  sunk  the  Cumberland  and  drove 
the  Congress  ashore,  and  then  returned  to  Norfolk  to  come 
out  the  next  day  and  complete  her  work.  Such  a  night  and 
such  a  morning  this  country  has  seldom  seen.  There  was  little 
sleep  anywhere;  in  the  South  wild  elation,  and  in  the  North 
a  frenzy  of  despair.  The  news,  flashed  by  electric  wires,  filled 
the  journals  everywhere.  There  was  but  one  ray  of  light,  and 
that  was  a  light  of  which  to  be  proud.  The  Cumberland,  re- 
fusing to  surrender,  had  gone  down  in  fifty-four  feet  of  water, 
her  flag  still  flying,  her  commander  preferring  that  it  should  be 
buried  with  himself  in  the  ocean  rather  than  surrendered  to 
the  enemy.  The  morning  of  the  Qth  of  March  found  the  coun- 
try in  a  thrill  of  expectancy,  of  hope  on  one  side  and  of  alarm 
on  the  other.  In  the  early  morning  the  Monitor  had  come  into 
the  bay.  As  the  Merrimac  started  for  the  third  ship,  the  Min- 
nesota, this  nondescript  craft  came  out  from  under  the  shadow 
of  the  huge  side  of  the  Minnesota  and  made  directly  for  the 
Merrimac.  The  veterans  on  both  sides  looked  at  her  in 
amazement,  the  skilled  and  trained  officers  of  the  Merrimac 
bursting  with  laughter.  Some  shouted,  "Here  comes  a  Yankee 
tin  can  on  a  shingle,"  and  others,  "Here's  a  Yankee  cheesebox 
on  a  raft,"  but  the  revolving  cheesebox  began  to  hurl  from  its 
eleven-inch  guns  solid  shot  against  the  armor  of  the  Merrimac 
which  broke  the  iron,  though  it  could  not  pierce  the  twenty- 


92 

four  inches  of  solid  oak  underneath,  while  the  raft  and  the 
cheesebox  proved  invulnerable  to  the  Merrimac  guns.  After 
several  hours  of  this  fighting,  in  which  the  Merrimac  could 
not  with  her  huge  bulk  ram  her  agile  and  small  antagonist, 
in  which  she  had  suffered  injuries  that  needed  investigation, 
the  Merrimac  withdrew  up  the  river  to  the  Norfolk  Navy 
Yard  and  never  came  out.  Again  language  is  inadequate  to 
describe  the  wild  excitement  in  every  city,  village  and  hamlet 
in  the  land  which  followed  this  most  dramatic  and  spectacular 
fight. 

The  possibilities  of  the  great  nations  of  Europe  recog- 
nizing the  Southern  Confederacy  were  over,  the  danger  to  the 
American  Navy  was  past,  the  hope  of  a  Confederate  Navy 
was  blasted,  but  an  event  occurred  that  day  which  challenged 
the  cabinets,  the  navy  departments  and  the  admiralties  of  every 
nation  in  the  world.  They  all  saw  that  their  fleets  were 
doomed;  they  all  saw  that  to  preserve  their  positions  on  the 
ocean  or  protection  for  their  coasts,  there  must  be  such  a 
feverish  haste,  as  never  was  known  before,  to  burn,  to  bury  or 
break  up  their  wooden  ships  and  secure  ironclads. 

There  is  no  study  more  interesting  than  the  one  which 
would  develop  how  much  property  has  been  suddenly  destroyed 
by  invention  or  discovery  or  the  opening  of  new  channels  of 
trade.  Quite  as  large  fortunes  as  have  ever  been  piled  up  by 
the  possessors  of  new  and  remunerative  ideas,  have  on  the 
other  hand  been  lost  because  the  revolutionary  character  of 
these  ideas  have  sent  the  old  ships  or  coaches  or  machinery  to 
the  scrap  heap.  One  of  the  greatest  fortunes  in  the  world 
is  due  to  the  sagacity  and  courage  of  its  maker  who  would 
sell  at  any  price  or  break  up  and  destroy  the  machinery  which 
he  had  installed  at  enormous  expense  yesterday  if  a  better 
one  came  on  the  market  to-day. 

The  Monitor  could  make  six  knots  an  hour;  the  dread- 
naught  makes  twenty-one.  The  Monitor  had  a  displacement 
of  seven  hundred  and  seventy-six  tons ;  the  dreadnaught  twen- 
ty-five thousand  tons.  The  Monitor  took  its  chance  of  hitting 
its  target  as  it  came  in  sight  of  its  revolving  turret,  but  even 
then  it  was  obscured  by  clouds  of  black  smoke,  and  the  range 
of  its  guns  was  a  few  hundred  yards.  Its  shot  weighed  only 


93 

one  hundred  and  sixty  pounds,  while  the  dreadnaught  with 
entire  accuracy,  even  in  a  heavy  sea,  will  send  a  shot  or  a  shell 
weighing  nine  hundred  pounds  for  six  miles,  with  a  possible 
range  of  ten.  The  resisting  power  of  the  soft  iron  which  pro- 
tected the  Merrimac  and  the  Monitor  alike  differed  as  much 
from  the  Harveyized  steel  armor  of  the  dreadnaught  as  one 
inch  is  to  fifty,  while  the  energy  of  the  projectile  from  the 
great  gun  of  the  dreadnaught  is  fifty  thousand  times  greater 
than  that  which  went  from  the  muzzle  of  the  gun  in  the 
Monitor. 

Ericsson  said,  as  his  little  craft  was  launched,  "I  name  you 
the  Monitor."  His  thought  went  back  to  his  school  days  when 
the  monitor  checked  the  bad  boy  or  told  the  teacher.  "I  call 
you  the  Monitor,"  he  said,  "because  you  will  admonish  the 
leaders  of  the  Southern  rebellion  that  the  batteries  on  the  banks 
of  their  rivers  can  no  longer  present  barriers  to  the  entrance  of 
the  Union  forces.  I  call  you  the  Monitor  as  a  warning  to 
Great  Britain  to  stop  at  once  the  building  of  the  three  battle- 
ships now  under  construction  which  are  to  cost  three  million 
five  hundred  thousand  dollars  apiece.  I  call  you  the  Monitor 
because  you  are  to  warn  all  nations  that  they  must  abandon 
their  navies  and  build  new  ones  on  your  suggestion." 

Before  Ericsson's  invention  of  the  screw  propeller,  the 
paddle  wheels  on  either  side  of  the  ship  were  thought  to  be  the 
greatest  progress  possible  for  the  propulsion  of  a  vessel.  To 
see  what  has  been  the  effect  of  this  product  of  Ericsson's 
genius,  one  has  only  to  picture  what  would  happen  to  the  tow- 
ering sides  of  the  Olympic  with  paddle  boxes  sufficient,  if 
they  could  be  constructed,  to  enable  them  to  move  at  all. 
What  would  happen  to  those  floating  fortresses,  the  twenty- 
five-thousand-ton  dreadnaughts,  if  they  were  dependent  upon 
this  suggestion  of  the  motive  power  in  the  mill  wheel  of  our 
ancestors  ? 

The  battle  which  had  been  fought  in  the  waters  of  Hamp- 
ton Roads  when  the  sun  went  down  fifty  years  ago  to-night 
has  its  lesson  to-day.  If  the  government,  when  the  rebellion 
broke  out,  could  have  had  the  full  strength  of  its  navy,  or  if  it 
had  possessed  an  adequately  equipped  army,  or,  in  other  words, 
if  in  time  of  peace  it  had  been  prepared  for  war,  the  rebellion 


94 

would  have  been  quickly  ended  and  we  would  have  been  spared 
the  horrors  of  four  years  of  the  bloodiest  civil  strife  in  all 
history.  There  is  a  mighty  preachment  now  which  finds  its 
echo  in  Congress,  that  we  can  save  money  by  reducing  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  army  and  denying  the  battleships  necessary  for 
the  navy.  "War  is  out  of  date,"  cry  these  mistaken  advocates 
of  peace.  There  was  a  time  when  the  world  was  made  up  of 
nations  seeking  to  gain  power  and  wealth  by  conquering  their 
weaker  neighbors,  when  the  possibilities  of  conflict  were  ever 
present  because  of  the  grasping  avarice  of  power.  The  pos- 
sibilities of  conflict  are  ever  present  for  us.  With  the  strained 
relations  existing  between  Great  Britain  and  Germany,  nothing 
but  the  invincible  strength  of  the  British  navy  prevented  war 
last  summer.  With  the  ambition  for  a  larger  place  in  the  sun 
which  characterized  diplomacy  about  Morocco,  nothing  pre- 
vented one  of  the  bloodiest  wars  of  modern  times  except  the 
efficiency  of  the  French  army,  united  with  the  overwhelming 
strength  of  the  British  navy.  Conditions  in  Mexico,  with  the 
enormous  sums  of  foreign  money  invested  in  that  country,  and 
the  great  numbers  of  the  citizens  of  various  nations  doing 
business  and  living  there,  are  full  of  peril  to  the  Monroe  Doc- 
trine of  which  we  are  the  guardian.  At  any  hour  all  Europe 
may  plump  to  us  the  question,  "Shall  we  rely  on  your  interpre- 
tation of  the  Monroe  Doctrine  or  protect  ourselves,  as  we  are 
amply  able  to  do?"  If  we  had  a  lesser  navy  they  would  not 
ask  that  question.  They  would  protect  themselves,  which  they 
would  much  prefer  to  do.  War  with  Turkey  would  not  have 
occurred  if  Turkey  had  possessed  a  navy.equal  to  that  of  Italy. 
It  came  upon  every  cabinet  suddenly  as  the  explosion  of  a  stick 
of  dynamite. 

But,  gentlemen,  let  this  night  have  other  lessons  more 
intimate  and  personal.  Let  it  be  the  commencement  of  a  move- 
ment for  an  instruction  which  shall  put  in  his  proper  place  in 
the  Temple  of  Fame  one  who  deserves  to  stand  among  the 
immortal  few  who  have  been  the  benefactors  of  mankind  in 
different  ages  of  the  world,  your  countryman  and  our  natural- 
ized fellow-citizen,  Captain  John  Ericsson. 


SPEECH  OF  HON.  CHAUNCEY  M.  DEPEW 
at  the  Dinner  Given  by  the  Lotos  Club  of 
New  York  to  Mr.  Justice  Pitney,  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  Thursday,  May  2,  1912. 

MR.  PRESIDENT  AND  GENTLEMEN  :  It  is  fortunate  for  the 
stability  of  our  institutions  and  the  preservation  of  our  Union 
that  the  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court  are  not  subject,  like 
our  candidates  for  the  Presidency,  to  an  open  primary.  The 
necessity  of  this  new  system  compels  the  President  and  an  ex- 
Presi'dent  of  the  United  States,  Governors  of  States  who  are 
candidates,  and  all  others  who  aspire  to  the  great  position,  to 
spend  nearly  every  day  of  the  months  preceding  the  convention 
in  living  on  sleeping  cars  by  night  and  making  rear  platform 
speeches  to  crowds  at  stations  by  day  in  order  to  impress  upon 
the  constituencies  their  several  claims  for  the  nomination  of 
their  party.  While  the  candidates  are  criticised,  it  is  not  their 
fault,  but  it  is  the  exigency  of  the  new  system  which  compels 
them  to  appear  as  far  as  possible  in  every  locality  and  before 
all  the  people  of  our  vast  country. 

There  are  about  two  hundred  thousand  lawyers  in  the 
United  States,  and  it  is  the  legitimate  ambition,  I  might  say 
the  absorbing  desire,  of  every  one  of  them  to  attain  the  highest 
honor  possible  in  their  profession,  and  that  is  to  be  one  of  the 
nine  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States.  If 
we  had,  as  is  now  advocated  for  filling  vacancies  in  that 
court,  the  open  primary,  there  would  be  at  least  twenty-five 
thousand  lawyers  traveling  the  country,  speaking  wherever 
they  could  secure  an  audience  and  making  heroic  efforts  to 
attain  the  first  page  of  the  daily  press.  They  would  be  appeal- 
ing for  votes,  not  because  of  their  knowledge  of  the  law  or 
of  their  ability  to  interpret  statutes  according  to  the  Consti- 
tution or  of  their  fearlessness  in  holding  the  scales  of  justice 
evenly  for  the  strong  and  the  weak,  for  the  rich  and  the 
poor,  regardless  of  popular  passion  or  temporary  excitement 
and  enthusiasm,  but  they  would  be  assuring  the  people  of  each 


96 

of  our  forty-eight  States  that  their  diverse  views  on  questions 
of  currency  and  of  tariff,  of  war  and  of  peace,  of  State  boun- 
dary lines  and  State  claims  to  authority  against  that  of  the 
Federal  Government,  the  candidate  could  be  relied  upon  to 
stand  by  the  views  of  the  people  he  was  addressing  without 
any  weak  reverence  for  an  antiquated  constitution  or  laws 
which  had  ceased  to  meet  the  popular  will. 

What  sort  of  a  bench  would  result  from  this  process  is 
a  question  on  par  with  the  famous  dictum  about  the  verdict  of 
the  petit  jury  that  no  one  but  divinity  could  foreknow,  and 
even  he  might  be  in  doubt.  Happily,  those  wise  founders  of  our 
government  decided  that  the  Justices  of  the  Supreme  Court 
should  be  appointed  by  the  President  and  confirmed  by  the 
Senate.  It  is  a  remarkable  tribute  to  this  method  of  selection 
that  the  historian  can  find  no  criticism  upon  any  choice  thus 
made  during  the  one  hundred  and  twenty  years  of  the  exist- 
ence of  the  Court.  Whatever  may  be  our  views  or  our  pref- 
erences on  the  Presidency,  there  is  one  question  on  which  there 
is  no  divided  opinion,  and  that  is  by  his  wonderful  training 
as  a  judge  and  his  accurate  knowledge  of  the  qualities  neces- 
sary to  meet  all  the  requirements  of  the  highest  court  in  our 
land,  no  President,  no  citizen,  is  better  fitted,  or  has  more 
admirably  demonstrated  his  ability  and  his  fairness  than  Presi- 
dent Taft.  He  has  never  considered  whether  the  best  man 
was  a  Democrat  or  a  Republican;  he  has  never  considered 
what  his  religion  might  be,  but  with  the  opportunity  that  has 
come  to  him  to  appoint  a  majority  of  the  Court,  he  has  in  a 
most  extraordinary  degree  elevated  and  strengthened  it. 

In  view  of  the  honor  conferred  upon  us  this  evening  by 
having  the  most  recent  appointment  to  this  great  tribunal  as 
our  guest,  I  am  reminded  of  the  beginnings  of  the  Court. 
After  the  Judges  had  been  appointed  by  Washington  and  sworn 
in,  they  opened  court  in  the  rooms  of  the  Merchants'  Exchange 
in  this  city.  There  being  no  precedent  as  to  the  robing  of  the 
Judges,  as  there  had  been  none  for  the  formation  of  the 
court,  Chief  Justice  Jay  appeared  in  a  gorgeous  cloak  presented 
to  him  when  he  received  a  degree  as  Doctor  of  Laws  from  the 
University  of  Dublin,  while  the  other  Judges  wore  the  plain, 
black  gown  which  is  still  the  uniform  of  the  Court.  They 


97 

met  every  day  for  three  days  in  succession,  but  not  a  case  was 
placed  upon  the  calendar,  nor  did  a  litigant  nor  a  lawyer  ap- 
pear before  them.  Then  they  accepted  as  a  body  an  invita- 
tion to  a  dinner.  This  was  the  first  official  action  of  the 
court.  It  is  a  precedent  which  they  have  followed,  not  col- 
lectively, but  individually,  with  the  greatest  success  for  one 
hundred  and  twenty  years.  When  a  hostess  in  Washington 
wishes  to  make  her  dinner  a  success,  her  first  effort  is  not 
the  Cabinet,  nor  the  Senate,  nor  the  House  of  Representatives, 
nor  the  Diplomatic  Corps,  but  the  Justices  of  the  Supreme 
Court.  If  she  can  secure  one  of  them,  and  generally  there 
are  only  two  or  three  available  on  account  of  the  immense 
labor  which  devolves  upon  them,  her  dinner  is  a  success.  She 
simply  builds  around  the  Justice  her  Diplomatists,  her  Cabinet 
Ministers,  her  Senators  and  her  members  of  the  House,  and 
the  central  figure,  like  Abou  Ben  Adam,  leads  all  the  rest. 

It  is  another  curious  incident  connected  with  the  begin- 
nings of  the  court  that  this  dinner  was  given  by  the  Grand 
Jury  of  the  County.  The  court  was  wholly  unknown  because 
entirely  new,  and  the  Grand  Jury  believing  and  saying  that 
they  were  the  oldest  institution  under  the  Common  Law  and 
its  guardian  and  protector,  were  the  proper  hosts  to  pay  the 
first  honors  to  the  new  Court.  From  being  wholly  unknown, 
as  at  the  beginning,  the  Supreme  Court  is  to-day  the  best 
known,  the  most  respected,  the  most  authoritative  and  the 
most  august  tribunal  in  the  world.  I  have  tried,  but  my  imag- 
ination fails  me,  to  create  a  scene  where  the  Marshal  of  the 
District  of  Columbia  should,  in  a  similar  way,  convey  from 
the  Grand  Jury  an  invitation  to  the  court  as  a  body  to  offi- 
cially accept  their  invitation  for  dinner. 

It  illuminates  the  present  situation  and  discussion  and  the 
claim  for  nobility  of  the  ideas  which  are  now  so  eloquently  and 
vigorously  presented  in  regard  to  the  courts  to  recall  the  pro- 
ceedings of  the  convention  which  framed  the  Constitution.  This 
was  no  ordinary  gathering.  Its  members  had  passed  through 
the  fires  of  revolution.  They  had  broken  ties  with  the  Mother 
Country  to  which  they  were  bound  by  tradition,  history  and 
education.  They  were  educated  men,  profound  students  and 
familiar  with  every  trial  of  government  which  history  dis- 


98 

closed  and  of  every  theory  which  philosophers  had  propounded. 
They  were  trying  upon  the  ruins 'of  the  Confederacy,  where 
the  central  government  had  no  power  and  the  States  flouted 
its  decrees,  its  orders  and  its  statutes,  to  build  a  safe  and  per- 
manent republic,  which  should  preserve  for  all  liberty  and 
law.  They  debated  as  to  the  powers  of  the  States  and  as  to 
the  powers  which  should  be  granted  by  the  States  to  the 
Federal  Government.  They  were  guided  by  the  spirit  of 
Washington's  v/ise  advice  to  "give  up  a  share  of  liberty  in 
order  to  preserve  the  rest."  After  they  had  formed  their 
Congress  and  created  their  presidency,  there  still  existed  the 
danger  of  a  popular  and  arbitrary  Executive  becoming  all  pow- 
erful or  of  a  radical  Congress  defying  both  the  President  and 
the  Constitution.  Then  was  originated  the  idea  of  the  Su- 
preme Court  with  power  to  hold  both  the  Executive  and  the 
Legislative  branches  of  the  Government  within  the  limits  of 
the  Constitution — a  court  which  Washington,  with  one  of  his 
terse  phrases,  designated,  what  is  has  been  ever  since  and  al- 
ways will  be,  "The  Keystone  of  the  Arch  of  Union." 

In  those  debates  these  great  lawyers,  statesmen,  philoso- 
phers and  soldiers  canvassed  thoroughly  and  exhaustively  the 
questions  of  appointment  and  of  removal  or,  in  other  words, 
recall,  which  are  now  agitating  the  public  mind.  While  there 
was  a  great  debate  and  many  votes  upon  other  provisions  of 
the  Constitution,  the  vote  upon  the  establishment  of  the  Su- 
preme Court,  and  the  great  and  sweeping  powers  which  were 
to  be  granted  to  it,  was  unanimous.  There  was  a  proposition 
that  the  Judges  should  be  removed  by  a  majority  vote  of  the 
two  Houses  of  Congress,  but  as  against  the  present  provision 
that  their  tenure  shall  be  for  life  and  during  good  behavior 
and  their  removal  only  by  impeachment  and  trial  before  the 
Senate,  there  was  but  one  vote  in  favor  of  the  removal  by  a 
majority  vote  of  the  two  Houses  of  Congress. 

There  was  another  feature  of  this  debate  which  illumines 
the  present  political  situation — the  agitation  now  to  create  con- 
ditions which  will  make  Judges  more  politicians  than  Judges, 
more  legislators  than  interpreters  of  the  law  and  the  Constitu- 
tion. A  proposition  was  offered  in  the  Convention  that  the 
Court  should  have  the  power  to  revise  acts  passed  by  Congress 


99 

before  they  were  submitted  to  the  President,  but  the  unanimous 
judgment  upon  this  proposition  was  that  the  function  of  the 
Court  was  not  legislative,  it  was  not  executive,  it  was  not  to 
make  laws,  but  to  interpret  the  laws  according  to  the  written 
Constitution.  Now,  however,  we  are  told  that  it  is  essential 
to  liberty  and  to  a  quick  response  to  the  popular  will  that 
judicial  decisions  shall  be  submitted  to  a  vote  by  the  people, 
or,  more  drastic,  that  if  the  Judges'  decisions  of  the  Court  are 
not  popular  the  Judge  shall  be  recalled.  All  of  this  reduced 
to  its  last  analysis  means  that  justice  shall  be  administered  by 
the  mob. 

Judge  Grover  was  one  of  the  ablest  jurists  who  ever  occu- 
pied a  seat  upon  our  Court  of  Appeals.  He  was  a  rough  dia- 
mond. It  was  my  good  fortune  to  know  him  intimately.  I 
remember  that  when  the  Court  of  Appeals  sat  at  Saratoga 
Springs  some  one  met  him  in  the  United  States  Hotel,  and 
said,  "Judge,  are  you  staying  here?"  He  said,  "No,  I  can't 
stand  what  they  call  a  course  dinner,  with  twenty  different 
things  and  an  hour  to  serve  it.  I  stay  at  a  boarding  house 
where  my  victuals  are  all  on  the  table  at  once." 

He  was  the  author  of  the  famous  phrase  that  when  a 
lawyer  is  defeated  in  the  highest  court  he  has  no  remedy  but 
to  go  down  to  the  tavern  and  curse  the  Court. 

But  the  statesmen  of  the  hour  propose  now  that  the  at- 
torney shall  have  a  new  remedy,  and  that  is  by  petition  remove 
the  Court  and  secure  one  which  will  decide  according  to  his 
brief  and  retainer. 

Within  the  last  year  there  have  been  two  trials  where 
passion  and  not  justice  occupied  the  bench.  In  each  it  was 
discovered  after  the  victims  were  killed  that  they  were  inno- 
cent. Col.  Roosevelt  tells  an  admirable  story  of  his  experience 
while  a  rancher  in  the  West,  when  a  citizen  was  hung  as  a 
horse  thief.  It  was  found  shortly  afterward  that  he  was  inno- 
cent and  one  of  the  court  which  condemned  and  executed  him 
was  appointed  to  gently  break  the  news  to  his  wife.  He  said, 
on  being  greeted  as  he  entered  the  house,  "Excuse  me,  madam, 
but  where  is  your  husband?"  She  said,  "He  is  down  in  the 
village."  Sard  he,  "No,  he  ain't,  I  have  got  him  in  a  box  out 
in  the  wagon.  He  is  dead.  The  boys  made  a  mistake  and 


IOO 

hung  him,  but  they  want  me  to  tell  you  for  your  comfort  and 
consolation  that  they  have  found  since  that  he  was  innocent." 

Any  one  who  has  had  a  large  experience  in  State  Legis- 
latures or  in  the  National  Congress  knows  that  many  acts  be- 
come laws  under  popular  clamor  or  to  gratify  particular  inter- 
ests of  capital  or  labor  which  the  courts  afterward  declare  to 
be  unconstitutional,  but  every  lawyer  knows  that  the  court  in 
rendering  its  decisions  points  out  how  the  things  sought  for  by 
the  legislative  body  can  be  attained  and  still  be  within  the  pro- 
visions of  the  Constitution.  The  court  does  not  legislate,  the 
court  does  not  pretend  to  say  whether  the  acts  are  wise  or 
unwise.  Then,  why  this  clamor  against  the  decision  and  for 
its  recall,  or  against  the  court  and  its  destruction?  It  is  be- 
cause of  impatience  and  cowardice.  All  politicians  who  have 
engineered  the  law  wish  to  get  immediate  benefit  from  the 
people  who  desire  it,  and  therefore  think  that  the  recall  would 
be  a  shorter  method  and  that  it  would  be  a  club  which  would 
intimidate  the  court  in  deciding  against  its  convictions  and  its 
conscience.  The  other  reason  is  cowardice.  The  promoters 
of  such  a  statute  do  not  wish  to  confess  that  they  did  not  know 
how  to  prepare  it.  They  are  afraid  to  go  before  the  legisla- 
tive body  of  which  they  are  members  and  acknowledge  the 
error  which  they  committed  in  the  original  act.  They  are 
afraid  to  say  to  that  legislative  body,  "We  have  now  prepared  a 
bill  which  accomplishes  the  same  purpose  we  originally  in- 
tended, but  it  is  strictly  within  the  provisions  of  the  Consti- 
tution and  will  be  approved  by  the  court."  To  make  such  a 
declaration  and  such  an  admission  would  lead  to  the  charge 
that  they  were  half-baked  statesmen,  and  they  would  lose  credit 
with  their  constituency  and  authority  with  the  body  to  which 
they  belong.  Therefore,  it  is  safer,  and,  properly  presented, 
infinitely  more  popular  to  ask  for  the  overthrow  of  the  court. 

During  my  years  as  a  Senator  the  question  would  often 
be  discussed  in  the  free  intercourse  of  the  committee  rooms 
what  position  under  the  government  was  most  desirable.  Of 
course,  the  Presidency  was  the  first  ambition  of  all,  and  yet  I 
have  known  Presidents  who  would  be  glad  to  exchange  the 
White  House  for  the  Supreme  Court.  But,  the  Presidency 
aside,  the  opinion  always  was  that  for  a  man  who  was  com- 


IOI 

petent  and  fit,  there  was  no  office  in  the  world  which  presented 
such  opportunities,  which  granted  such  independence,  from 
which  could  be  derived  so  much  pleasure  and  in  which  there 
were  so  many  opportunities  for  usefulness  and  permanent  fame 
as  to  be  a  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States. 

The  traditions  of  that  great  tribunal  are  an  inspiration 
to  every  member.  Great  men  have  preceded  them  and  their 
decisions  have  made  possible  the  perpetuity  of  the  Union 
of  the  States  and  the  preservation  of  a  government  of  liberty, 
law  and  order.  The  court  has  expanded  to  apply  by  interpre- 
tation the  general  principles  of  the  Constitution  to  meet  and 
permit  the  marvelous  growth  of  the  country  and  the  develop- 
ment of  its  resources.  That  our  institutions  which  were  framed 
when  our  country  consisted  of  thirteen  States  and  three  mil- 
lions of  people  are  elastic  enough  for  all  the  needs  of  forty- 
eight  States  and  a  hundred  millions  of  people  is  due  to  the 
wisdom,  the  courage,  the  learning  and  the  genius  of  the 
Supreme  Court. 

We  here  to-night  congratulate  the  Supreme  Court  that  to 
succeed  one  of  the  greatest  Justices  who  ever  honored  that 
tribunal  the  President  has  appointed  and  the  Senate  has  con- 
firmed so  great  a  lawyer,  so  profound  a  jurist,  so  wise  and 
broad  a  man  as  our  guest,  Mr.  Justice  Pitney. 


THE  TROW  PRESS 
NEW  YORK 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  LOS  ANGELES 

THE  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below 


JUN     9  1952 


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D44  1  Later  speeches 


